WHEN I WAS A GIRL 
IN HUNGARY 



ELIZABETH PONGRA.CZ-JACOBI 















COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 























WHEN I WAS A GIRL 
IN HUNGARY 


CHILDREN OF OTHER LANDS BOOKS 


Independent Volumes With Characteristic Illustrations 
and Cover Designs nmo Cloth 

There are many books about the children of other countries, but 
no other group lUfe this, with each volume written by one who has 
lived the foreign child life described, and learned from subsequent 
experience in this country how to tell it in a way attractive to Ameri¬ 
can children — and in fact to Americans of any age. 

WHEN I WAS A BOY IN CHINA, By Yan Phou Lee 
WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN ITALY, By Marietta Ambrosi 
WHEN I WAS A BOY IN JAPAN, By Sakae Shioya 
WHEN I WAS A BOY IN GREECE, By George Demetrios 
WHEN I WAS A BOY IN PALESTINE, By Mousa J. Kaleel 
i WHEN I WAS A BOY IN BELGIUM, By Robert Jonckheere 
j WHEN I WAS A BOY IN RUSSIA, By Vladimir Mokrievitch 
| WHEN I WAS A BOY IN ROUMANIA, By Dr. J. S. Van Teslaar 
WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND, By Cornelia De Groot 
WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN MEXICO, By Mercedes Godoy 
WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN ICELAND, By Holmfridur Arnadottir 
WHEN I WAS A BOY IN PERSIA, By Youel B. Mirza 
WHEN I WAS A BOY IN SCOTLAND, By George McP. Hunter 
WHEN I WAS A BOY IN NORWAY, By John 0. Hall 
WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN SWITZERLAND, By S. Louise Patteson 
WHEN I WAS A BOY IN DENMARK, By H. Trolle-Steenstrup 
WHEN I WAS A BOY IN INDIA, By Satyananda Roy 
WHEN I WAS A BOY IN TURKEY, By Ahmed Sabri Bey 
WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN FRANCE, By Georgette Beuret 
WHEN I WAS A BOY IN ARMENIA, By Manoog Der Alexanian 
WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN SWEDEN, By Anna-Mia Hertzman 
WHEN I WAS A BOY IN KOREA, By Ilhan New 
WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY, By Elizabeth Pongracz-Jacobi 


LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO. 

BOSTON 














Ready for Church. 

Marcsa, a childhood friend of the author, and her mother 











WHEN I WAS A GIRL 
IN HUNGARY 


BY 

ELIZABETH PONGRACZ JACOBI 

s. 


ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS 



BOSTON 

LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO. 











,TT3 




Copyright, 1930, 

By Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. 

All Rights Reserved 

When I Was a Girl in Hungary 


Printed in U. S. A. 


©CIA 23067 



o - 





CONTENTS 


I. 

Our Vacation Trip . 

9 

II. 

A Midsummer Morning 

. 31 

III. 

Sunday at Eors 

. 45 

IV. 

Winter Walks and Talks 

. 58 

V. 

The Hungarian Sea 

. 72 

VI. 

Work and Play 

. 88 

VII. 

Transylvania . 

. 105 

VIII. 

Sylvester Night 

. 128 


5 



ILLUSTRATIONS 


Ready for Church . . Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

Boys Coming Out of Church ... 18 

View from St. Gellerts’ Hill . . .19 

Looking Down from St. Gellerts’ Hill 

towards Pest ..... 19 

In Their Sunday Best .... 48 

Harvesting Girls on Their Way to 

Church ...... 49 

Horseherds on Hortobagy Puszta . . 49 

Entrance of Matthew Cathedral in 

Budapest ...... 62 

The Ancient Matthew Cathedral . . 63 

The Fisher Bastion .... 63 

The Home-Coming of Louis Kossuth . 70 

Village Beauties in Their Sunday Finery 71 

Fishing on Lake Balaton ... 78 

Sailing on Lake Balaton ... 78 

Hungarian Harvesters .... 79 

6 



ILLUSTRATIONS 


7 


Uncle Szatay with the Four-in-Hand . 104 

Uncle Beke Driving the Ox-Cart . .105 

Beautiful Needlework Made by Village 
Girls ...... 105 

Statue of Prince Eugene of Savoya . 110 

Parliament House in Budapest . . 110 

Horseherds and Cowherds on Hortobagy 

Puszta ...... Ill 

Uncle Bagi in His Sheepskin Coat . . Ill 


* 




When I Was a Girl 
in Hungary 

CHAPTER I 

OUR VACATION TRIP 

When I close my eyes trying to recall 
the dearest memories of my childhood, the 
picture that stands out most clearly in my 
mind is that of a long avenue of old wal¬ 
nut-trees, with a plain, one-story house, 
painted yellow, at the end of the drive. 

This was the house where we spent 
many long, warm, delightful summers. 
Puszta-Eors was the name of our grand¬ 
father’s estate. It comprised about two 
thousand acres, there were two farms on 
it, and the yellow house was called “ the 
castle,” although it hardly resembled one. 
But it seemed almost a fairy castle to me. 

9 


10 WHEN 1 WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


I was a city child, and the day when I 
could escape from the narrow confines of 
our city flat in a large apartment house, 
to run wild for three months in the Eors 
garden and orchard was the happiest day 
in the year for me. 

Even the days that preceded the flitting 
were full of pleasant excitement. The 
apartment was being prepared for its sum¬ 
mer sleep. My grown-up sister, my Ger¬ 
man governess, known as “ Fraulein,” 
and the maids stowed away curtains and 
carpets, shrouded pictures and lamps in 
linen covers, and the bare rooms reeked 
with the pleasantly unusual smells of tur¬ 
pentine and naphthaline. Everybody was 
too busy to pay any attention to me, so 
after I had finished packing my own pri¬ 
vate treasures, I practised high jumps 
over the pile of carpets in the drawing¬ 
room, till Fraulein discovered me and 
whisked me off to bed, scolding: 

“ Du schlimmes Kind, here you are 


OUR VACATION TRIP 


11 


jumping about when you ought to be in 
bed—you must get up at five o’clock to¬ 
morrow—get to sleep as fast as you can! ” 

But I was very wide-awake next morn¬ 
ing, when, after dressing hurriedly, the 
maids and the “ house-master ” (janitor) 
carried down the trunks and piled them on 
the box seat of the cab waiting below. 
Then we said good-bye to Mari, the house¬ 
maid, and Borcsa, the cook, who were go¬ 
ing home to their own people for the sum¬ 
mer, and away we rattled to the station, 
along the empty streets of Budapest, lying 
deserted in the early morning sunshine. 

The cabby sat on the box seat edge¬ 
ways, clinging with one arm to the huge 
trunk that held our belongings. The 
other hand sufficed to guide the old horse 
along the fine straight avenue of Andrassy 
Street, then along Iverepesi Street that 
was already busy and noisy with clanging 
tramcars and drays drawn by heavy 
horses. 


12 WHEN 1 WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


Papa put up his stick like a rail to keep 
me from tumbling off the narrow back 
seat, and told me stories about the time, 
not so very long ago, when we used to 
drive from morning till nightfall in a car¬ 
riage and pair to get to Eors. The rail¬ 
way line had been built long before I was 
born, but when I was a tiny baby, and 
my mother was alive, Grandpapa, an old- 
fashioned gentleman who prided himself 
on his fine horses, insisted on driving in¬ 
stead of travelling by rail. 

“Of course it was a long and tiring 
journey,” Papa said. “ The whole family 
was packed into the landau—Mother and I 
and you five children. Friiulein and the 
maids took care of the luggage that came 
along with the cart. They did not reach 
Eors until dark, but we changed horses 
on the way, and used to get there in time 
for tea. But the last time we drove to 
Eors—you were about fifteen months old 
—Grandpapa sent a pair of young horses 



OUR VACATION TRIP 


13 


for us, and they shied when they first saw 
the railway engine at Bia crossing. Uncle 
Szatay ”—that was the coachman’s name 
—“ couldn’t hold them, and we had a spill 
—the next thing we knew we were all in 
a ditch by the roadside! 

“ Mother and I had a terrible fright, 
but in a few moments we discovered that 
everybody was safe, and no bones broken. 
Barna, Elemer, Maria, and Victor had all 
scrambled to their feet—but there was no 
sign of you—Baby Boske was nowhere to 
be seen! 

“In a frenzy of fear, the boys and I 
contrived to lift the carriage with the help 
of Szatay, and we flung out the rugs and 
shawls and cushions that lay in a heap at 
the bottom. We feared that you had been 
killed instantly—there was no cry, no 
sound from you, not even a groan! There 
at last, was the edge of your little blue 
dress! And there were you, snug and 
comfy under a rug, lying with your thumb 





14 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


in your mouth,—reflecting, with wide- 
open eyes, on the funny thing that had 
happened! You smiled and crowed when 
you saw me, and evidently you didn’t 
know why Mother felt you all over, and 
laughed and cried! Well, I hope that 
when you are grown up you will meet 
life’s accidents with the same equanimity,” 
Papa said, smiling. I didn’t quite under¬ 
stand what he meant by this, but I believe 
I have followed his advice, or rather the 
example he always set us. “After that,” 
Papa concluded, “ Grandpapa would let 
us travel by rail, but he preferred to drive 
to Eors as long as he lived.” 

I never tired of hearing the story of this 
adventure. By the time it was finished, 
the cab stopped in front of the station en¬ 
trance. What a bustle of travellers and 
porters and vendors of fruit and news¬ 
papers, what hurrying and ticket-buying 
and registering and leave-taking there was 
in the great hall of the Central Station! 


OUR VACATION TRIP 


15 


Breakfast at the station restaurant was 
another thrill, since it occurred only once 
a year, but I was too excited really to 
enjoy my coffee with whipped cream, and 
the crisp rolls strewn with sugar or 
poppy-seed. Then came the scramble for 
seats in the train, and when we had all 
been packed in, Maria and Fraulein, Vici 
and myself, with the bags and coats and 
magazines and blue-paper screws with 
cherries and apricots which Papa bought 
to keep us company on the journey—the 
moment for saying good-bye had come. 

Papa and my two big brothers stood on 
the platform. They were to come down 
to Eors every Sunday, for the distance 
was no more than two and a half hours by 
rail and carriage. But since I had never 
undertaken a longer journey in my life, 
I felt as though I were starting on an 
exploration to the North Pole, to say the 
least. 

“ Take care of yourselves,” Papa called 


16 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


out, “ drink as much milk as you can, to 
make you fat and rosy! ” 

“ Give my love to the dogs,” Elemer 
told Fraulein, who adored dogs, and used 
to take Fidi, the little brown terrier, to 
bed with her. “And give them a bath on 
Saturday before I come! ” 

“Ask the gardener to give Boske a little 
plot for a garden of her own, and seeds,” 
Papa instructed Maria. “ On Sunday 
I’ll see whether she has been industrious! ” 
Everybody suddenly thought of a num¬ 
ber of important things to say that they 
had forgotten before, but the engine whis¬ 
tled and the train started slowly. Papa 
and the boys followed with long strides, 
calling out: “ Give our hand-kisses to 
Grandmamma! Greetings to the aunts 
and uncles! God with you! Take care of 
yourselves!” Then the engine gathered 
speed—a last wave of handkerchiefs—and 
we were off. 

I craned my neck for a last look, but 


OUR VACATION TRIP 17 

Maria pulled me back. She motioned to 
the sign on the window, which said, in four 
languages—German, Italian, and Croa¬ 
tian besides Hungarian, being spoken in 
the parts of the country through which the 
carriage passed,—“ It is dangerous to lean 
out! ” 

Maria was my senior by nine years, and 
since the death of our mother she kept 
house for us, and she took care of me like 
a real mother. I looked up to her tre¬ 
mendously and thought all the world of 
my big sister, and we have always been the 
greatest friends. 

We were a very happy and united 
family. Papa did everything he could to 
make up for the loss of our mother. 
There never was any one like him to in¬ 
vent games and stories, to discuss the boys’ 
problems, to form our minds and arouse 
our interest in everything that a person of 
real education ought to know. I was the 
youngest of the family, and everybody’s 


18 WHEN 1 WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


pet. I suppose I narrowly missed being 
a spoiled child. But I was thoroughly 
convinced that n^ father, my big sister, 
and my three brothers were the most won¬ 
derful people in the world, that there had 
never been anybody quite like them be¬ 
fore, and that I wasn’t a patch on the rest 
of the family. Perhaps this has saved me 
from being a disagreeably conceited and 
spoiled girl. 

Papa didn’t hold with the old-fashioned 

principle of suppressing children, of “ tak- 

% 

ing them down a peg or two.” He 
thought it was good for us to enjoy our 
childhood as much as we possibly could. 
So I always had a good time, but going 
to Eors was the best of all. 

The train described a wide curve around 
the city of Budapest, our fine capital. 
Past the zoo—one could just catch a 
glimpse of the tall aviary cages,—past the 
show grounds in the Town Park, with 
their merry-go-rounds, circus tents, and 




Boys Coming out of Church, 







Looking down from St. Gellerts’ Hill towards Pest. 



View from St, Gellerts’ Hill, 

St, Gellert, the martyred bishop, who converted Hungary 

to Christianity. 





OUR VACATION TRIP 


19 


many booths,—past the new market hall 
by the river, with mountains of fresh fruit 
and vegetables piled on the embankment 
pavements, where they had been unloaded 
from the barges that brought them up the 
Danube before dawn. Now the train 
rumbled over the railway bridge that 
spanned the noble wide Danube River. St. 
Gellert’s Hill, crowned by the ancient 
fortress, was left behind, and at last we 
were in the real country! 

Fields upon fields of waving corn, in all 
shades of silky green just turning to yel¬ 
low, as far as the eye could see along that 
flat countryside! And meadows, greener 
still, with cows and sheep and horses 
grazing in them. Then again fields of 
potatoes, sugar-beets and maize, with 
peasant girls wearing gay shawls and 
many bright-colored petticoats, plying the 
hoe. When the train rumbled past they 
looked up from their work and waved. 

“ Look, Maria, they are waving,” I 


20 WHEN 1 WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


cried, “ how nice of them—they don’t even 
know me! ” and I shook my handkerchief 
frantically, feeling sure that their greet¬ 
ing was most particularly meant for me. 

We raced through small stations with¬ 
out stopping. We had glimpses of pretty 
cottages, with pots of red geraniums in 
the windows, and gay glass halls brighten¬ 
ing the tiny gardens. The little station 
bell tinkled, and the guard stood at atten¬ 
tion beside the shiny rails, his red flag 
lowered, his fingers raised to his cap. We 
rattled past villages, most of them no 
more than a wide dusty street bordered by 
whitewashed, thatched cottages. Garlands 
of last year’s yellow corn-cobs hung from 
the porch eaves, sunflowers and mallows 
grew by the latticed fences, and flocks of 
geese paddled over the green common 
and splashed about in the puddles, mak¬ 
ing a terrible gaw-gaw noise. The chil¬ 
dren who tended them and played in the 
dirt shouted and waved, too, and the 


OUR VACATION TRIP 


21 


driver of a hay-cart that waited by the 
red-white-and-green turnpike at a cross¬ 
ing touched his hat. 

Only two other persons were in our 
compartment, a nice elderly lady and gen¬ 
tleman. We had scarcely crossed the 
Danube when the old lady took down a 
yellow bag from the luggage net above 
her seat and opened it. Out came a red 
napkin which she neatly spread on the 
seat between herself and her husband, a 
loaf of whitest home-made bread, a piece 
of home-cured bacon, thickly strewn with 
red paprika, a shiny fresh green paprika, 
then a box containing tempting turos 
beles; pastry stuffed with curds and 
luscious currants. When the feast was 
spread, the old gentleman took his 
bicska , a formidable-looking knife, from 
his pocket, cut a slice of bread and 
bacon for his wife and one for himself, and 
they started to breakfast with great en¬ 
joyment. 


22 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


I am afraid I stared rather hard, for the 
old lady noticed it, and said, in her 
friendly way: 

“ Would you like to taste our bread and 
bacon, little girl? Uncle will cut you a 
slice.” 

“ No, thank you,” I replied shyly, and 
skipped away to look out of the passage 
window. 

“ Oh, yes, you must,” the old lady in¬ 
sisted, turning to the others. “ Help 
yourself, little Miss, have some bacon, 
young gentleman. You mustn’t offend 
me, you know. You are not Hungarian, 
Miss, are you? ” she said to Fraulein. 
“ Well, you must taste this fine paprika 
bacon—oh, no, that is too small a piece! 
You mustn’t refuse our Hungarian hos¬ 
pitality ! ” 

Fraulein made a face, for the hot, sharp 
paprika did not agree with her German 
constitution, but Victor mischievously cut 
a large slice of the most crimson part for 


OUR VACATION TRIP 


23 


her. She knew she mustn’t refuse, for 
fear of giving offense to the hospitable old 
lady. 

“ Come, little girl, you must taste some 
of my pastry,” she said. “ I’ve made it 
myself. We don’t hold with city cooking. 
When we go to see our son who has a job 
in the city, I always take my own good 
home victuals, so the poor boy gets some 
proper food sometimes. God knows what 
messes he feeds on when he is alone,” she 
sighed, with an expression which seemed 
to say that there was not a scrap of food 
fit to be eaten in the entire great city of 
Budapest. 

The old gentleman had finished his meal. 
He took his be-tasseled long pipe from his 
pocket, stuffed it deliberately with fra¬ 
grant tobacco—“ home-grown,” he took 
care to tell us,—and engaged Victor in a 
conversation. 

“ So you are going to Eors,” he said. 
“ Oh, I know the estate very well. I was 



24 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


there several times when the old gentle¬ 
man was alive.” 

“ Yes,—Grandfather,” Victor put in. 

“ Oh, was he your grandfather? ” our 
travelling companion said eagerly. “ Fine 
old man—rode as straight as an arrow 
when he was eighty. Knew all about 
horses, too! ” 

Soon the old gentleman and my brother 
were deep in a discussion about horses, a 
subject which interested Victor more than 
anything else in the world, except music. 
Fraulein and the old lady exchanged 
their views on city and country cooking, 
but since Fraulein’s Hungarian was not 
up to the mark, she could hardly convince 
her opponent. Maria read, and I skipped 
from window to window exclaiming at the 
sights. 

Soon I recognized familiar landmarks. 
There was the little acacia thicket not far 
from Bicske, the station where we were to 
get off. There were the church spires— 


OUR VACATION TRIP 25 

three of them, for Bicske was a small 
township with a few thousand inhabitants. 
And there was the low pink brick wall that 
closed in the park of the neighboring 
estate. 

“ Do you know who used to live at 
Galagonyas, little girl? ” the old gentle¬ 
man asked when he saw that I was look¬ 
ing at the old house and the giant horse- 
chestnut trees in front of it, as the train 
curved round Galagonyas park. 

“ Oh, yes, Uncle—Count Lajos Batt- 
hyany, and they tied him to a cannon, 
and made him walk to Budapest, and he 
was shot in the courtyard of the barracks 
near where we live,” I said, proud of my 
knowledge. 

“ Quite right—and do you know who 
Count Lajos Batthyany was, and what he 
did? ” 

I hung back, giving no answer. I had 
repeated, parrot-like, bits of information 
I had picked up from the elder children, 



26 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


but it would be years before I was to learn 
history, or understand it. 

“ He was the first Prime Minister of 
the Hungarian Government,” the old man 
said gravely, “ at the time of our struggle 
for independence in 1848. When, in ’49, 
Austria put down our revolution with the 
help of the Russian army, and Kossuth 
had to flee from the country,' Batthyany 
was arrested at his country house of 
Galagonyas, and since he refused to turn 
a traitor to the Hungarian cause, he was 
shot as you said. He was one of the mar¬ 
tyrs of the noble struggle. Every Hun¬ 
garian child ought to know this,” he con¬ 
cluded. 

“ Come, come, Sandor, don’t talk your 
tiresome politics to such a wee little girl,” 
the grey-haired auntie put in. The train 
was slowing down, and there was a con¬ 
fusion of getting down luggage and 
saying good-bye to our travelling com¬ 
panions. And at last we actually came to 


OUR VACATION TRIP 


27 


a standstill. The guard cried, “ Bicske! ” 
and off we clambered, getting down our 
things at top speed. In another minute 
the engine whistled, and the train rumbled 
along on its way to Vienna. The station- 
master saluted us with a smile: he knew 
the Eors children well. And there, in the 
road at the back of the station, was the 
carriage from Eors, with the horses in new 
harness, and Uncle Szatay in his braided 
dark blue livery, the black streamers 
flying from his hat, sitting on the box. 
Victor was in the seat beside him in a 
moment, holding the reins: it was his 
privilege to drive us home. 

“ I kiss your hands,” Uncle Szatay 
greeted us. “ How little Miss Boske has 
grown! There is the luggage cart, Miss 
Maria,—Beke is bringing out the trunks 
with the porter. The luggage will be in 
Eors after dinner.” 

How delightful the drive in the fresh 
country air was after the stuffy railway 


28 WHEN 1 WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


carriage! Through the main street of 
Bicske the bays trotted, leaving a cloud of 
dust behind them. Then at a foot’s pace 
up Galagonyas hill, and when we had 
passed the pink brick wall, Victor put the 
horses to a smart pace along the white 
highroad. 

Uncle Szatay was Victor’s personal 
friend, and what he didn’t teach my 
brother about horses and farming wasn’t 
worth knowing. Victor inquired about 
everything and everybody on the estate, 
and I listened from where I sat on the 
back seat, holding the ends of the reins in 
the firm belief that I was driving, too. 

“ When is the harvest to begin, Szatay 
bacsi [Uncle] ? ” Victor asked. 

“ Next Tuesday, ifiur [young gentle¬ 
man],” Szatay said. “ The barley is un¬ 
common fine this year, unless it gets a 
stroke of heat before that.” 

“ How is Marcsa, Szatay bacsi? And 
how is Riska? ” I wanted to know. 


OUR VACATION TRIP 


29 


Marcsa was the coachman’s little girl, 
my particular friend, and Riska was the 
name of their cow. 

“ Marcsa goes to school, little Miss, and 
she had a very good certificate—all ‘ Ones/ 
And Riska is doing finely—she has a 
pretty spotted calf. There are also new 
white rabbits in the stable, for you to play 
with—with red eyes,—and many little 
pigeons.” 

What joy! Now the carriage turned 
from the highroad into the drive that led 
to the farm—and there, to be sure, in 
front of Szatay bacsi’s cottage, was 
Marcsa, shouting and waving. We drove 
past the sheep’s stable, and the yard with 
the estate blacksmith’s and Cartwright’s 
workshop; then came the stables with the 
colts’ run, the cow-house and our forsaken 
tennis-ground near the well where so 
many of our tennis-balls had found an 
untimely end. There was the granary, 
with the old inspector touching his hat to 






30 WHEN 1 WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 

us, jingling his keys. And now we were 
driving up the avenue of walnut-trees, and 
the yellow house was smiling at us in the 
sunlight. The carriage skirted the large 
circular flower-bed in front of the house, 
and came to a sudden standstill, right in 
front of the doorstep. 

“ God brought you!” cried Sari neni 
[aunt] as we climbed down from the car¬ 
riage. Grandmamma and Lujza neni 
came tripping from the garden to welcome 
us. “ Run, Etel,” Sari neni ordered the 
bare-legged peasant maids about, “ take a 
jug of hot water to the misses’ room—get 
the coffee, Panni! Take the pogacsa 
[pastries] out of the oven, Cook, and 
bring the fresh buttermilk from the cellar! 
Wash your hands, my dears, and come 
and have a little ten o’clock luncheon un¬ 
der the chestnut-trees! ” 


CHAPTER II 


A MIDSUMMER MORNING 

Swallows build their nest in our roof’s shade,— 
What’s that in your apron, little maid? 
Red-cheeked apples—look, they’re ever such a 
pretty sight! 

They taste like new wine—come, have a bite! 

I lay in bed, blinking. Yellow sun¬ 
spots trembled on the ceiling, filtered by 
the green foliage outside. The singing of 
Etel, our kitchen-maid, was all mixed up 
with my dreams. But 
the meaning of the regular “ thud-thud ” 
that accompanied it. She was making 
butter—I couldn’t miss that! 

I took a flying leap out of the big old- 
fashioned bedstead and ran across the 
yellow pine boards of the floor to the 
washing-stand. A cold rub-down—hair 
pushed back with the circular comb that 

31 


suddenly I realized 




32 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


held it in place—little gingham frock 
slipped on! Now I was ready to scamper, 
barefoot, down the wooden staircase, 
across the red brick-paved passage, to the 
cool cellar entrance. This was furnished 
with rows of shelves, on which stood jars 
of preserved cucumbers, small barrels of 
cabbage, and many green-glazed milk- 
pans. Cook used to skim them mornings 
and nights, and now she had poured three 
days’ collected cream into the wooden 
churn. Etel was singing at the top of 
her voice: 

“ On the first day of October, 

We’ll march with the soldiers . . .” 

and pounding away at the cream in the 
churn as vigorously as she could. The 
buttermilk was spluttering on her bare red 
arms. 

“ You are too late, Missie,” she cried 
when she saw me. “ Butter is coming— 
it’s too thick for vou to churn now! ” 



A MIDSUMMER MORNING 33 

“ But you’ll let me help, Etel, won’t 
you? ” I caught hold of the churn-staff, 
feeling that my great strength would be 
an enormous help to Etel. 

She laughed. “ That will do, Missie. 
Are your hands clean? Then you may 
help rinse the butter.” 

I loved to do that—splash about in the 
milky cold water and squeeze it out of the 
soft slippery patties of yellow butter. 

“ Now get some fresh vine-leaves, dear,” 
Etel said. 

I ran out into the dewy garden and 
culled a handful of leaves from the vine 
that climbed the wall. Every cake of 
butter was packed between two large 
leaves to keep fresh. I was allowed to 
carry one of them to the breakfast-table 
under the chestnut-trees. 

Fidi, the little brown terrier, and Bodri, 
the big white sheep-dog, leaped and danced 
about my bare legs. Grandmamma was 
already seated at the breakfast-table, chat- 


34 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


ting with Fraulein. She was nearly 
eighty at this time, a very lively and jolly 
old lady, fond of company, and she never 
tired of telling us jokes and songs and 
stories that had been new when she was 
young. I can still see her, with the sun¬ 
light playing on her smoothly-parted 
white hair, her pretty old face all smiles 
and dimples, beating time to her songs: 

“ Every true patriot bewails the fate of Poland, 

For Kosciusko no more fights her battles.” 

When Grandmamma was young, the 
world had been shaken with pity for 
Poland, the unfortunate country that was 
then conquered and divided by three 
enemy powers. Since then, Poland has 
been reunited, and Plungary has suffered 
very nearly the same fate. All that was 
ancient history, but Grandmamma still 
remembered how she had acted in theat¬ 
ricals in aid of Polish refugees, and loved 
to tell us about old times. 


A MIDSUMMER MORNING 35 

“ Fraulein, haven’t you seen my keys? ” 
Aunt Sari was calling from the garden. 
She was always hunting for her keys, be¬ 
ing very absent-minded, and kept asking 
everybody about them. “ Bodri, haven’t 
you seen my pantry-key? ” she would ask 
the dog. And, wonder of wonders, Bodri 
came running, holding the basket of keys 
between his teeth! 

There was a general burst of merri¬ 
ment. Aunt Lujza, coming from the 
kitchen-garden, joined in it. Aunt Lujza 
was a very jolly and very fat person. She 
took charge of orchard and kitchen-gar- 
den—“ for exercise,” she said. But the 
exercise did not make her reduce. The 
harassed-looking gardener came behind 
her, carrying a big basket of green beans. 
It was he who took all the exercise, pick¬ 
ing the vegetables, while all Aunt Lujza 
did to reduce her weight was to stand 
behind him and order him about. 

Uncle Sandor also appeared, with his 


36 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


pockets full of apples he had found under 
the trees. He made it his business to keep 
count of the fruit on the trees, and seemed 
to know every walnut and every apricot 
by name. 

And there was the pit-a-pat of horses’ 
hoofs in the avenue at last. Maria and ' 
Victor were returning from their morning 
ride with Uncle Lajos. Uncle Lajos, my 
mother’s brother, Grandmamma’s young¬ 
est son, managed the estate. The whole 
farm, and even his sisters, stood in awe 
of him, for he had the gift of roaring 
like a lion if anything was not to his lik¬ 
ing. If the stables were not quite spick- 
and-span, or dinner was five minutes late, 
the whole farmyard, at a distance of a 
quarter of a mile, would know that “ the 
gracious gentleman ” was displeased. 

We children were not afraid of Uncle 
Lajos; on the contrary, he was our fa¬ 
vorite uncle. We knew the twinkle of his 
childish blue eyes, we knew he was fond 


A MIDSUMMER MORNING 37 

of us, and we had long since discovered 
that “ his bark was worse than his bite.” 
Aunt Sari, however, grew frantic at the 
sound of his horse’s hoofs. 

“ There they are—and breakfast not on 
the table yet! Etel, Etel—bring the 
coffee! Panni, where are the rolls? Beat 
up the eggs—be quick about it! ” 

I ran to meet the riders. It was my 
privilege to give Uncle’s fine bay horse 
“ Rablo ” a lump of sugar every morning. 
Uncle reined up when he saw me. 

“ Want a ride, baby? ” Up I clam¬ 
bered, clinging to his stirrup. He made 
me sit in front of him, and gave me a good 
gallop round the house. That gave Aunt 
Sari time for her breakfast preparations, 
and when we dismounted, there was the 
swish-swish of Etel’s many starched petti¬ 
coats, hurrying along the garden path 
with the breakfast-tray. 

When the table was cleared, all the 
ladies of the house settled around it to the 




38 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


task of slicing beans for winter preserves. 
I repaired to the orchard. There was a 
particularly friendly old apple-tree be¬ 
tween whose forked branches one could 
sit most comfortably. There was also a 
little hollow in the trunk inside which 
Victor had fitted up a shelf. I called this 
my storeroom and kept my favorite for¬ 
bidden delicacies in it. Raw carrots and 
turnips and the cherished remains of the 
very pink-and-green sugar-plums which 
my friend Marcsa, Uncle Szatay’s daugh¬ 
ter, had brought me from market last 
week. Fraulein said I mustn’t eat them. 
“ They are painted with poison-colors,” 
she declared. But I had secreted them in 
my storeroom. I had to share them with 
the big red ants that lived in the apple- 
tree, but they left enough for me to lick 
and revel in, with the pleasantly exciting 
sense of danger. Who knew but that 
Fraulein might be right, after all, and I 
would be poisoned and dead before night? 


A MIDSUMMER MORNING 39 

On a handy branch near by hung the 
bow and arrows that Papa had made for 
me last Sunday. I was making ready to 
shoot the large black stag-beetle that was 
evidently preparing a raid on my store¬ 
room, when I caught sight of Marcsa 
among the trees. 

“ Come up, Marcsa,” I called out. 

She found a seat beside me, and picked 
a large apple, quite green and unripe, 
from the branch above. 

“You mustn’t eat that, Marcsa, you’ll 
be sick! ” 

“ Not I,” she laughed, “ I’m not such a 
delicate missie! This is fine! ” And she 
knocked the green, hard apple on the 
trunk of the tree until it became all brown 
and juicy. “ Taste it! ” 

I did, and thought it was delicious. I 
had just picked another green beauty, and 
was about to hammer it soft, when we 
heard the gravel crunching under the 
footsteps of Uncle Sandor. Marcsa and 


40 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


I quickly withdrew among the dense 
foliage of the old tree. 

Uncle Sandor stopped quite near, but 
he did not see us. 

“ Tamas, Tamas! ” He was calling for 
the gardener. “ There were two fine ap¬ 
ples on this branch only this morning— 
what has become of them? ” 

“ I don’t know, gracious gentleman,— 
unless it was the cat or the birds,” Uncle 
Gardener said. He knew all along who 
it had been, but he wasn’t going to tell 
tales. 

“ The cat, the cat! It’s always the cat 
or the birds if I ask you,” Uncle Sandor 
muttered crossly. He was going on, but 
at that critical moment I couldn’t suppress 
a giggle. 

“Ah, here we have the kittens!” He 
had discovered our hiding-place, and 
poked at us with his stick. “ Fine young 
ladies! ” 

Marcsa and I slipped down and ran off 


A MIDSUMMER MORNING 41 

as fast as our feet would carry us. Uncle 
Sandor was threatening us with his stick, 
but he was laughing all the time. 

“ Now we’ll feed the pigeons,” said I, 
and went to the kitchen to beg for crumbs 
and corn. 

On the doorstep I ran into Uncle 
Lajos. 

“ Hello, Baby—shall I take you for a 
drive? I am going to a corn lot to see the 
harvesters—they have started cutting the 
wheat to-day.” 

Immediately the pigeons and Marcsa 
were forgotten! Uncle Szatay was bring¬ 
ing round the gig, and I climbed into the 
high driving-seat beside Uncle Lajos. 

He was an expert driver, and a great 
lover of horses. Small though I was, he 
taught me how one must always be careful 
to drive in the old ruts, and how to watch 
between the horses’ ears to see whether 
they were going straight; to stop always 
in the shade on a hot day, and to stick 


42 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 

green branches into the harness to keep 
away the flies. 

Presently Uncle Lajos pulled up his 
horse in the shade of some acacia-trees 
that bordered a yellow wheat-field. A 
small boy came running up, white shirt¬ 
sleeves and trousers flying, eager for the 
honor of holding, the gracious gentleman’s 
horse. 

We got out and walked across the 
stubble to where the reapers were at work. 
It was beautiful to watch those white- 
dressed figures in a long row, laying down 
the yellow wheat with rhythmic swings of 
their scythes. Girls wearing bright shawls 
and skirts over their snowy blouses, fol¬ 
lowed them, gathering bunches of the 
wheat with sickles, and leaving it in heaps 
for others to tie up. The neat stacks were 
placed at regular intervals on the crisp 
stubble. 

Uncle went to speak to the reapers’ 
foreman. I stopped in the shade of a 


A MIDSUMMER MORNING 


43 


wheat-stack where some women were pre¬ 
paring dinner for the harvesters. A num¬ 
ber of children were hanging around. 
There was even a tiny baby in swaddling- 
clothes, slumbering sweetly under a muslin 
shawl. Her mother was working with the 
reapers. There was no one at home to 
take care of baby, so it slept outdoors from 
dawn till sundown, growing strong and 
hale in sunshine and gentle breeze. 

I stopped to watch the baby, but when 
I wanted to run after Uncle Lajos, I 
suddenly found I couldn’t get away. 
Something held me back. What was it? 
A strong twist of straw, like that which 
the girls use to tie up the bunches of 
wheat, bound me to the trunk of the acacia- 
tree. I must have been very intent upon 
the baby, for I never noticed the rope be¬ 
ing passed round my arms. 

I suppose I looked very much fright¬ 
ened, for one of the women, noticing my 
plight, came to comfort me. 


44 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


“ Did those naughty girls frighten you, 
dearie? Don’t you know that’s what the 
reapers always do when any one comes to 
the harvest for the first time in the year? ” 
The girls were giggling behind the 
wheat-stack. 

“ Now you must pay a ransom, Missie! ” 
“ But I have no money,” I said, wrig¬ 
gling to get free. 

“ Oh, you’ve been taken a prisoner, 
Boske!” Uncle Lajos called out, having 
come up from behind. “ Well, shall I 
leave you here, or shall I pay a ransom 
for you, and take you home to dinner? ” 
He took two large, shiny silver coins 
from his pocket and gave them to Veron, 
the girl who seemed to be the leader in 
mischief-making. She untied my bonds, 
and we all laughed together. 

“ God with you, Veron—I sha’n’t let 
myself be caught next year! ” 


CHAPTER III 


SUNDAY AT EORS 

“ Before you drive to the station, 
Szatay, stop at the butcher’s. Bring the 
meat I ordered yesterday. And, Szatay, 
don’t forget to call at the grocer’s for the 
parcels. Tell your wife to be here by 
eleven. She must help with the cooking. 
And if you see the gardener tell him to 
hurry up with the vegetables. And when 
you call for the mail tell the postmistress 
to send round three dozen eggs. We 
haven’t enough, and hers are bigger than 
any others in the village. And tell Beke 
to send up five litres more milk.” 

Sari neni would have given Uncle 
Szatay a dozen more orders, had he not 
looked at his watch, and said, “ I shall be 
late for the train, gracious lady.” He 
gathered up the reins, and told the horses, 

45 


46 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 

“ Come on, children.” That was enough 
for them to start at a smart trot. They 
were off to the station, to fetch Papa and 
the boys and as many other guests as the 
landau would hold. 

Sunday morning at Eors was all excite¬ 
ment and expectation. Everybody was 
busy with preparations. After Fraulein 
had dressed me “ decently, for once,” she 
said, I was left to my own devices until 
the carriage should return with the visi¬ 
tors. 

Usually I wasn’t allowed beyond the 
garden hedge alone. But Sunday was 
different. There were no carts, no horses 
or oxen about. I ventured along the wal¬ 
nut avenue and down to the farmyard, on 
the plea of “ going to meet the carriage.” 

The usually busy farmyard was calm 
and peaceful on Sundays. The whirr of 
the threshing-machine was silent. The 
chiming of the church bells from the 
neighboring village could be heard 


SUNDAY AT EORS 


47 


through the clear air. It was too far for 
us to go every Sunday, but a good many 
of the farm hands and harvesters tramped 
over, and I loved to watch them start in 
all their finery. 

The men had exchanged the cool, loose 
white linen shirts and trousers for the 
close-fitting dark blue cloth suit which 
they wore, summer and winter, for Sun¬ 
day best. Black braiding, silver buttons, 
and shiny top-boots made them look very 
dignified. The young men wore posies 
and gay streamers on their black hats, and 
the louder the top-boots creaked, the 
smarter they considered themselves. 

The women and girls looked as gay as 
peacocks in their bright-patterned, richly 
gathered skirts. They often wore as 
many as a dozen stiffly starched petticoats 
underneath. Tight-laced bodices, snowy 
blouses, and silk aprons were all em¬ 
broidered, rows of beads encircled the 
girls’ necks, and ribbons were plaited into 


48 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


their long tresses. The married women 
wore head-dresses trimmed with gold lace, 
or silk shawls. 

Marcsa and her brother Peti came run¬ 
ning to meet me. They were dressed 
exactly like grown-ups. Marcsa strutted 
about like a little turkey to show off the 
swishing of her skirts. But Peti wasn’t 
careful of his best suit. Pie slipped off 
his boots, and squirmed up the mulberry- 
tree to get a good lookout on the Bicske 
road. 

“ They are coming, Missie! They will 
be round the corner in a minute! ” 

I turned and raced up the avenue, with 
the horses clattering behind me, and I was 
on the doorstep when the carriage came to 
a standstill. What a surprise! Not only 
had Papa and the big brothers come, but 
a friend of Victor’s and a cousin of my 
own age, one of the three sisters who were 
the favorite playmates of my childhood. 

We could hardly wait until breakfast 



In their Sunday Best. 
Marcsa and her little cousin, 







Harvesting Girls on their Way to Church. 


' . .. j ' # ^• ? • -.V^ ' *Vr 


JPanwi 

Horseherds on Hortobagy Puszta, 








SUNDAY AT EdRS 49 

was over to get away into the garden. I 
had to show Cousin Terus my favorite 
haunts, my apple-tree and storeroom, the 
best currant and raspberry bushes, and in¬ 
troduce her to the pigeons and the horses 
and Marcsa and Peti. 

Presently Papa joined us. He never 
interfered with our games and talks; he 
would pretend not even to be listening. 
He would just start talking to himself 
very quietly, or pick up some little object 
which would begin to look interesting in 
his hands. He would make a long-eared 
rabbit out of his handkerchief, or murmur, 
“ When I was a little boy . . .” And 

presently the children would drift towards 
him, irresistibly drawn by his story, to 
listen, or watch the fascinating toy being 
made. 

I have never known anv one else who 
loved children as my father did, or could 
make them love him as he could. 

On this particular Sunday, he was pac- 


50 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


ing along the garden hedge, apparently 
quite forgetting our existence. We could 
hear him murmur: “No, there is none 
here—perhaps down by the brook.” And 
he made for the back gate. 

The whole lot of us were after him like 
a flash. 

“ What are you looking for, Papa? ” 

“ Oh, are you here, too? Well, I just 
thought I might find some hemlock to 
make myself a water-gun to play with.” 

“ Oh, please make me one, too! And 
one for me, Bacsi, please! Show me how 
to make one! ” we clamored. 

“ I know of some hemlock by the 
brook,” Peti said, “ I’ll show you.” 

“ Very well, we will manufacture guns 
for you—but mind: none of you may pick 
hemlock if I am not there, for it is a poi¬ 
sonous plant.” 

Peti showed the way. Papa cut nice 
straight pieces from the thick hollow stem 
of the hemlock plant, and bored a small 


51 


SUNDAY AT EdRS 

hole at the end of each where rings grow 
like those on a bamboo cane. Then he 
selected straight sticks slightly longer 
than the hemlock pipes, and wrapped a bit 
of rag round the end of each. When the 
hemlock pipe was filled with water and 
the stick pushed into it, the water spouted 
out in a lovely jet through the hole bored 
in the thick ring part. 

We watched, breathlessly. 

“ Now remember,” Papa said, when all 
four guns were finished, “ these guns are 
for play, not for mischief. Don’t splash 
each other, but go and fight that bed of 
stocks in the garden. See what an army 
of them there is! That tall purple one is 
the general. Shoot them! ” 

We had a merry water-battle with the 
purple and white stocks. It was rather 
one-sided, for they couldn’t shoot back, 
but they were all the better for the sousing 
we gave them. 

“ Boske, Terus! ” Fraulein was calling. 


52 WHEN 1 WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


“ Don’t forget there is some work for you 
to do. You must pick the raspberries for 
dinner—Uncle Gardener is busy! ” 

That was work we both liked to do. 
Soon our basket was filling up. Close by, 
at the edge of the raspberry thicket, Vic¬ 
tor and his friend sat chatting and work¬ 
ing. Victor was studying music, with a 
keener interest than he had for school 
work. He was covering the ruled paper 
on his knees with black-headed notes. 
The other boy, who had a gift for draw¬ 
ing, sketched a group of trees with the 
house in the background. 

Peti and Marcsa watched, shy but fas¬ 
cinated. 

“Well, which do you like the better, 
Peti?” asked Victor, who liked to tease. 
“ This which I am doing, or that which 
the ifiur is painting? ” 

Peti fidgeted and shifted from one foot 
to the other. 

“ Well?” 


53 


SUNDAY AT EORS 

“ Please, ifiur, I like yours better.” 

“ But why? Look, you can make noth¬ 
ing of this. It’s just black dots on ruled 
paper. The ifiur has painted a pretty 
picture—why do you like mine better? ” 

“ Please, ifiur—only because we’ve 
known you such a long time! ” 

By our shout of laughter Peti knew he 
had said something silly. He and Marcsa 
ran as for dear life, and wouldn’t show 
their faces again until the visitor had left. 

The midday heat of the puszta was 
growing too oppressive to stay outdoors. 
Everybody assembled in the cool tiled 
passage. I sat on Elemer’s lap and told 
him what I had been doing all the week. 

Elemer was like my father in many 
ways. We children were tremendously 
fond of him and consulted him in all our 
troubles. 

“ I have written a poem,” I confided to 
him. “ Do you think Papa will buy it? ” 
“ That depends,” he replied gravely. 


54 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


“ If it is very good, and not too expensive, 
perhaps he will.” 

“ It is beautiful,” I said, modestly. “ I 
have printed it on pink paper, and drawn 
a picture of a cat and a tree on it. It costs 
five coppers. I want the money because 
there is a fair in Bicske on Wednesday, 
and I want to buy a cat in the bag for 
everybody.” 

I had not yet learned to write, only to 
print in capital letters, and my “ poem,” 
I suppose, lacked all rhyme and reason. 
But Papa gave me ten coppers for it, and 
Elemer ordered a duplicate copy. That 
made me quite rich. Papa always kept 
my literary efforts, and valued them more 
highly than any one else has valued any¬ 
thing I have ever written since! 

Afternoon brought more visitors, neigh¬ 
bors who drove over to call. The gentle¬ 
men played cards in the summer-house, 
and Etel hurried to and fro with bottles 
of iced beer and plates of salami. At five 


SUNDAY AT EORS 


55 


o’clock, afternoon coffee was spread un¬ 
der the chestnut-trees. It did start with 
coffee, topped by mountains of whipped 
cream, and garnished with cakes, bread- 
and-butter, cold ham and sausage. But 
Sari neni prided herself on her housekeep¬ 
ing, and wasn’t content with just that. 

Presently the maids appeared bearing 
dishes heaped with fried chicken. Grand¬ 
mamma and the aunts kept piling new 
helpings on everybody’s plate. 

“ Just another little wing, Neighbor 
Detre—and you must taste the salad, our 
own family recipe! ” 

“ Thank you, gracious lady—I really 
can’t! It’s delicious—but I have had three 
helpings already! ” 

It would have been a disgrace for the 
Eors household if the guests had departed 
without having eaten as much as they pos¬ 
sibly could. Uncle Lajos and the boys 
went round the table, filling wine-glasses. 

“ This little wine lets itself be drunk, 



56 WHEN 1 WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


Lajos,” one of the visitors said apprecia¬ 
tively. “ May God let live our hostess.” 

Grandmamma, too, raised her wine¬ 
glass and returned: 

“ May God let live our dear guests! ” 

Then came ice-cream and tarts, retes - 
pastry with various fillings: the ladies 
preferred apples and cherries, but the 
gentlemen were all for the savory cabbage 
filling. 

“ Could I have the recipe for this curd 
tart, my dear? It is ever so much tastier 
than the way we make it,” purred one of 
the ladies. 

“ Maria will write it down for you,” 
Sari neni said, with a wink that meant that 
there would be a slight change in the copy 
of the recipe. Family recipes were kept 
a strict secret. 

The baskets of fruit and the luscious 
melons which came next were taken away 
untouched. No one could eat any more. 

A little exercise was needed after this 


SUNDAY AT EdRS 57 

tiring meal. The “ big ones ” went to 
play tennis, while Papa paced the avenue, 
murmuring to himself, “ When I was a 
little boy . . 

“ What happened, Papa? ” 

“ Oh, are you here, too? Well, when I 
was a little boy, away back in Transyl¬ 
vania . . .” 

And he launched upon one of the stories 
I loved. Up and down the avenue, while 
the sun went down behind the trees, and 
a cool breeze rose after that hot and event¬ 
ful day. 

“ Do take me to Transylvania, Papa. 
I want to see all the places you went to 
when you were little,” I begged. 

“ I hope I can take you one day, when 
you are older—that is, if you are a very 
good little girl,” he said, and I had to be 
content with that. 



CHAPTER IV 


WINTER WALKS AND TALKS 


When the harvest was over, when all 
the grain had been threshed, and teams of 
twisty-horned white oxen were harnessed 
to the ploughs, we had to return to the 
city. 

On our last evening in Eors, Vici and I 
went to say good-bye to all our friends. 
We visited the dogs, the horses, and the 
sheep, with lumps of sugar and handfuls 
of salt to suit every taste. Finally we 
went into the cow-house. 

It was warm and cosy on a chilly night 
like this one. Here all the farm hands 
assembled for a friendly chat when the 
day’s work was done. The cows were 
lazily chewing the cud, and the hanging 
oil lamp shed a friendly circle of light. 

58 


WINTER WALKS AND TALKS 59 


“ So you must go back to school, ifiur,” 
Galambos bacsi the cowherd said. 
“ What’s the good of such a lot of study¬ 
ing? Sure it’s bad for your health! ” 

“ That’s what I think,” Vici assented 
readily. “ I would much rather stay here 
and look after the farm and play the 
piano. But my father thinks differently.” 

“ Quite right, too,” Szatay bacsi said. 
“ If the young gentleman wouldn’t go to 
school, he’d remain as great a donkey as 
you are, Galambos. A gentleman can’t do 
with just reading and writing like a stupid 
cowherd. He must study for eight years 
in a Middle School, and then go to the 
university and be a doctor or a lawyer or 
such-like—like Elemer ifiur.” 

Galambos did not seem quite convinced. 

“ And you, Missie—need you go to 
school, too? ” 

“ Oh, no,” I said ruefully, “ I should 
like to, but Papa says a little girl had 
better learn her four elementary classes at 




60 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


home. I shall only go to school when I 
am ten, to Middle School. But I’m going 
to university, too—I shall be a doctor 
when I grow up.” 

“ Ha, ha, ha—not even my great-grand¬ 
father ever heard of such a thing! ” Uncle 
Gardener declared. Everybody was 
laughing. “ A woman doctor! You are a 
funny one, Missie! ” 

“ Well, perhaps I shall be a writer or 
a painter, or perhaps I shall have two 
dozen children,” I gave in. 

“ That’ll be much better, Missie. Well, 
God bless you, and give you good health. 
Don’t study too much, and come back next 
year! ” 

After the long, lazy vacation days we 
were all quite glad to return to the bustle 
and the duties of our town life. I had 
lessons with Papa. We called them les¬ 
sons, but they were really half-hours of 
fun. Yet somehow by the end of the year 
I had learned all I need know for the 



WINTER WALKS AND TALKS 61 


examinations, and a great deal more that 
is not taught in schools. 

I also began to learn English at this 
time. Fraulein had gone, and we had an 
American governess instead. Miss Minnie 
Myer hailed from Boston. We rather 
liked her, but I am afraid she found us a 
handful. I can still recall the plaintively 
shocked tone in which she used to say, 
“ Why-y, Victor . . if my brother 

had been up to some of his droll mischief. 
We also composed a sort of chantey in 
her honor. I can’t remember more than 
the first two lines: 

“ She was born—hark to my ditty! 

In the States, in Boston city.” 

All the same, Miss Minnie and we were 
great friends. She was new to Budapest, 
and I delighted in showing her the sights 
of our fine city. 

Our daily walks mostly took us over one 
of the bridges across the Duna (Danube) 


62 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


River, to the old part of the town. We 
loved the narrow old streets, the quaint 
houses, ancient Matthew’s Cathedral, and 
the shady walk along what had once been 
the castle ramparts. 

“ You know, Miss Minnie, when the 
Turks were in Hungary, they held the 
Fortress of Buda for a hundred and fifty 
years. Wasn’t that dreadful? But then 
we took it back, and drove them away,” 
I told her as proudly as if I had led the 
charge in that battle, more than two hun¬ 
dred years before. 

Miss Minnie admired the old church 
that had been a mosque in the Turkish 
days. The Cathedral bells were chiming 
twelve. Suddenly, the quiet streets echoed 
to the sounds of a band. This was the 
hour for the changing of the Guards at 
the Royal Palace. 

“ Come, Miss Minnie, let’s run and 
look!” I dragged her along, willy-nilly. 
A stream of children followed the regi- 



Entrance of Matthew Cathedral in Budapest. 

The author and her son in the foreground. 


jr- ** 




Us 






■ 
















>< % 

at: 















The Fisher Bastion. The Ancient Matthew 

Built in imitation of the rampart Cathedral. 

of Buda Castle, 




























WINTER WALKS AND TALKS 63 


ment. The conductor of the band looked 
more pompous than any General, and 
little street Arabs marched behind him, 
imitating his stately gestures with his staff. 
A white pony carried the big drum. One 
just couldn’t help feeling gay and keep¬ 
ing time to the music. 

“ The King must be here,” I told Miss 
Minnie excitedly, “ else they wouldn’t 
change the Guards like this.” 

“ Why, isn’t he here all the time? ” 

“ Oh, no—not very often. You see he 
is Emperor of Austria as well as King of 
Hungary—that is just the trouble,” I 
added, pretending to be very wise. 

“ Why, what does that matter? ” It 
must have amused Miss Minnie to draw 
me out. It was rather funny that a small 
child like me should talk about politics. 
But these things were so often discussed, 
of such vital importance to every one, that 
children in my time could not help hear¬ 
ing about them. 



64 WHEN 1 WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


“ Well, you see, he likes Austria best, 
because he was born there. And he wants 
all the soldiers to speak German. Every¬ 
body must be a soldier, and it is very dif¬ 
ficult for Hungarian peasant boys to learn 
German. They don’t like to be ordered 
about by Austrian officers. But Queen 
Elizabeth is fond of Hungary, and she is 
very good and beautiful, only she is very 
sad since her only son died.” 

Miss Minnie said, “ I see,” rather 
breathlessly. We had been running to 
keep up with the soldiers. In front of the 
Palace gates the Guard was being 
changed. The band played, and on a bal¬ 
cony appeared the fine straight figure of 
old King Francis Joseph. The people 
cheered, and in spite of all I had just been 
saying, I cheered lustily with the rest. 
Then we turned homewards, to relate 
proudly that we had seen the King, and he 
had saluted us! 

At other times we would walk along the 


WINTER WALKS AND TALKS 65 


embankment. The view from this riverside 
walk is one of the prettiest I have ever 
seen. The wide stream spanned by hand¬ 
some bridges, rocky St. Gellert Hill op¬ 
posite, with the old castle on top; Castle 
Hill crowned by the Royal Palace, the 
many spires of the old city, gentle hills 
rising in the distance—I had to show Miss 
Minnie all that. Then we would walk 
up-stream to Parliament House, and have 
a look at St. Margaret’s Island where we 
loved to spend spring afternoons among 
the ruins of an old, old convent. 

Sometimes we would meet Papa, tak¬ 
ing his midday constitutional on the em¬ 
bankment. He would take us down the 
steps to the water’s edge. Barges were 
anchored to the landing-stages, the steam¬ 
boat from Vienna discharged her pas¬ 
sengers, swift little local boats crossed the 
stream, and placid fishermen cast their 
nets over the water. 

“ The ice is drifting,” Papa said. “ If 



66 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


this frost continues, the river will be 
blocked in a few days. No more shipping 
until spring! ” 

“ It doesn’t matter,” I said. “ One can 
always walk to Buda over the bridge.” 

“ One can now, dear, but one couldn’t 
sixty years ago. You know that Buda 
and Pest used to be two separate towns. 
Buda was the more ancient, built around 
the castle, and dating back to Roman 
times. Pest was the busier, more modern 
city. In those times no one thought of 
building bridges of this length.” 

“ How did people get across, then? ” 

“ In summer there was a boat-bridge 
floating over the Duna. Planks were laid 
across boats anchored side by side. But 
when the first frost came, it was taken to 
pieces and stored away until next spring. 
Then the twin cities were cut off from 
each other for months.” 

“ But couldn’t people get across if the 
river was frozen? ” 


WINTER WALKS AND TALKS 67 


“If it froze very hard, yes. But often 
people ventured across before the ice was 
bearing, and there were terrible accidents. 
I remember one that happened when I 
was a young man. It was a very hard 
winter. The Duna was coated with ice 
for many weeks. There was regular traffic 
across the river. Show-people and ped¬ 
lars set up booths, a band played on the 
ice, and people walked across just for fun. 
One day it began to thaw more rapidly 
than any one had expected. Suddenly 
there was a terrible crash—the ice cracked 
—and some forty people were drowned. 
Since then it is strictly forbidden to ven¬ 
ture on the ice of the Duna.” 

One day in early spring, Papa took 
me for a walk. He was rather more silent 
than usual. 

I noticed that there were black flags and 
draperies on many of the houses. And 
somehow I felt, although I did not know 



68 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


it, that the people we passed in the street 
looked depressed. 

“ Papa, why are there so many black 
flags? ” 

Papa bared his handsome silver head. 

“ Because a great man is dead, dear. 
Louis Kossuth died this morning.” 

I knew who Kossuth was, just as every 
American child knows the name of George 
Washington. He was the leader of the 
Hungarian struggle for liberty in 1848, 
and Governor of the country when the 
nation rose up against Austrian oppres¬ 
sion. After a heroic fight, the Hungarians 
were overcome by Russian armies which 
the Austrians had called in to help them. 
The suppression became worse than ever, 
and Louis Kossuth had to flee from the 
country. 

Many years later, Hungary was recon- 

• 

ciled to Austria. Both countries together 
formed a monarchy with equal rights for 
each. But many people still said that 


WINTER WALKS AND TALKS 69 

Hungary would be happier and more 
prosperous if she were independent of 
Austria. 

The name of Kossuth still was a by- 
word in every Hungarian family. His 
picture hung in every home, however hum¬ 
ble. We had been brought up on tales 
and legends of that great struggle of 1848, 
and my own grandfather had been a cap¬ 
tain in Kossuth’s army. 

“ The Governor was very old,” Papa 
said. “ But many people still went to see 
him at his home in Italy, as worshippers 
go on a pilgrimage to a holy shrine. The 
King never forgave him for initiating the 
revolution. The greatest leader whom the 
Hungarian nation has ever known, the 
King considered a rebel.” 

“ And did Kossuth never return to 
Hungary after 1848?” 

“ Never. He went to England and to 
the United States where he won many 
friends to the Hungarian cause. In 


70 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


America, Governor Kossuth was received 
like a sovereign. He was a wonderful 
orator. Everywhere he travelled, making 
speeches, telling people about our unfor¬ 
tunate country. He tried to raise money 
and soldiers to liberate Hungary. But we 
were not strong enough. After a while 
the Governor retired to Torino, in Italy. 
He would not return to a Hungary that 
was bound to Austria. Now he is coming 
home—dead.” 

The remains of Kossuth were brought 
home from Torino. I was allowed to 
watch the funeral procession from Grand¬ 
mamma’s balcony. A black procession, 
tens of thousands of people, great and 
small, rich and poor. Simple peasants 
travelled hundreds of miles to follow the 
Governor’s remains to the grave. Hun¬ 
dreds of prominent men, and all the stu¬ 
dents of the High Schools, wearing na¬ 
tional costumes of black and silver, car¬ 
ried torches. And flowers, flowers, flowers 



The Home-Coming of Louis Kossuth. 
The Western Station draped. 















Village Beauties in their Sunday Finery, 



WINTER WALKS AND TALKS 71 


■—all the violets of Hungary were strewn 
on the path of the dead Governor. 

The procession lasted for hours. I shall 
never forget the silence, the awful hush of 
the city, smothered in black draperies. 
The nation mourned its greatest son. 

Such was the home-coming of Governor 
Kossuth. 


CHAPTER V 


THE HUNGARIAN SEA 

Not far from Budapest, in a green and 
smiling landscape, wreathed by vine-clad 
hills, lies a wide blue lake, the largest in 
all Central Europe. It is called Lake 
Balaton. Every Hungarian child who 
has not seen it has heard songs and stories 
about it. A summer at Lake Balaton, 
“ the Hungarian Sea,” means all the joys 
that a seaside summer means to an Amer¬ 
ican child. 

So when, one day in early summer, 
Uncle Doctor declared that I looked 
rather green, and that a lakeside holiday 
would do me all the good in the world, I 
almost “ wriggled out of my skin with 
joy,” as our saying goes. I was sorry 
to miss Eors, but a Balaton vacation 
promised new and unheard-of pleasures. 

72 


THE HUNGARIAN SEA 


73 


We pitched our tent in one of the many 
small resorts by the lake. Boglar, like 
most of the small communities near Bala¬ 
ton, boasted of no great luxuries at the 
time. There were only two or three larger 
resorts with comfortable hotels. At 
Boglar we rented a peasant cottage, 
Borcsa cooked our meals, and we took 
turns in getting fresh water from the 
spring. There was a tiny garden full of 
old-world flowers on the hillside behind 
the house. I shall never forget how, after 
arriving late one night, I climbed the hill 
in the morning, and got my first vieAV of 
the enormous expanse of glittering blue 
water. Tiny white sails and 
drifted on it in the distance, and the 
square, coffin-shaped height of Mount 
Badacsony, once a volcano, loomed far 
away, on the opposite shore. 

But Balaton did not always look so calm 
and blue as it did that morning. Storms 
are very sudden on that wide, unprotected 


lazy canoes 


74 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


sheet of water. Each year the lake claims 
the sacrifice of human lives. 

Every morning we went down to the 
sandy beach for a swim in the shallow, 
sun-warmed water. Then the boys would 
push out the boat they had hired, and row 
us out upon the calm lake. 

Every time when Papa left us after 
spending the week-end at Boglar, he made 
the boys promise not to go too far, and 
never to start if there was the slightest 
sign of a storm coming. 

But really the lake looked as innocently 
blue as a calm pool on the hot morning 
when, as we were going to get our canoe 
from Uncle Somogyi the boat-keeper, he 
told us: 

“ Better not go out this morning. 
There’s a storm coming.” 

“ Nonsense, Uncle Somogyi,” Maria 
said. “ Why, the lake is perfectly calm, 
and there isn’t a breath of wind. We want 
to row across to Badacsony.” 


THE HUNGARIAN SEA 


75 


“ That you won’t do, Miss,” Uncle 
Somogyi declared, with the utmost calm. 
He sat down on our upturned canoe and 
looked as if no power on earth could ever 
remove him. 

“ But Uncle Somogyi,” Elemer remon¬ 
strated, 44 the water is as smooth as a glass, 
and the meteorological report says 4 pro¬ 
longed calm and warm weather. . . ” 

44 I don’t care for no 4 metology,’ ” Uncle 
Somogyi said. 44 The lake looks a nasty, 
glassy green down by Szigliget, and if I 
tell you there’s going to be a storm, well, 
then there is. And punctum! ” 

We were going to remonstrate, but 
Elemer, always the wisest among us, 
whose lead we followed in everything, de¬ 
clared: 44 Well, I suppose Uncle Somogyi 
knows best. We’ll row across to-morrow. 
Let’s get our fishing-lines instead. I want 
to land a fogas for dinner.” 

Hardly had I fetched our cherished pail 
of worms from the garden and settled 


76 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


down to our angling on the steep bank 
when we noticed that the color of the lake 
was suddenly turning to a dark, angry 
green. Great white-crested breakers came 
racing towards the shore, although there 
was no wind and the sun was still shining 
brightly. 

Before five minutes had elapsed the sky 
was covered with a grey film. Suddenly 
there came a squall that almost carried 
me off my feet. The lake was roaring 
with great waves that threatened to carry 
the boat-house off its creaking rafters. 

Uncle Somogyi crossed himself. 

“ God have mercy on those who are out 
to-day,” he said. Then all at once he gazed 
intently at a distant point of the lake. 
We watched, too, and there w r as a white 
speck on the dark, roaring waters—dif¬ 
ferent from the cataracts of foam on the 
wave-crests. 

“A sail!” he cried. But Uncle 
Somogyi was down at the boat-house al- 


THE HUNGARIAN SEA 


77 


ready, tugging at the chain that bound our 
canoe. A moment later Elemer was be¬ 
side him. He was a strong boy, a good 
oarsman and capital swimmer, and for all 
the wise caution he used in looking after 
us, he did not know what fear meant. 

Before we realized what was happening, 
the two were off, struggling desperately 
against the waves that were still going 
high, although the hurricane had decreased 
in strength. The sailing-boat was in a 
worse plight than a rowboat would be. 
Evidently the inexperienced sailors, sens¬ 
ing no sign of the oncoming storm, could 
not strip in time. We watched breath¬ 
lessly. Elemer and the old boat-keeper 
could hardly make any headway. The sail 
disappeared, turned up again, then we lost 
sight of it. The canoe toiled on, fighting 
its way towards the point where we had 
last seen the sail. 

An anxious hour followed. The wind 
abated, the lake calmed down as suddenly 


78 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


as the storm had come. Balaton was blue 
again, calm, smiling, innocent. 

An hour later, the small rescue party 
returned. They were drenched, weary, 
and depressed. I had never seen Elemer 
so tired as he was after that desperate use¬ 
less fight with the lake. We took Uncle 
Somogyi home with us and gave him a 
drink of hot red Badacsony wine to warm 
him. 

“ There was not a trace of her to be 
seen far and wide,” he told us. “ Nothing 
except a bit of broken mast. Surely they 
were visitors at Fiired, gone for a sail 
without asking any one who knows Bala¬ 
ton. You’ve got to know Balaton, or pay 
the price,” he said, staring in front of him 
with eyes that surely had seen many sim¬ 
ilar tragedies before he, too, had learned 
“ to know Balaton.” 

We all looked upon Uncle Somogyi as 
an oracle after that. I used to go down to 
the boat-house of an afternoon while he 



Fishing on Lake Balaton. 



Sailing on Lake Balaton 












Hungarian Harvesters. 





THE HUNGARIAN SEA 


79 


mended the big net which he used to take 
trailing after his boat when he went out 
fishing after sundown. I never tired of 
questioning him about his experiences of 
the lake. 

“You should see Balaton in winter, 
Missie, when we have no city visitors,” he 
told me. “ When all the lake is one sheet 
of ice, and the wind catches the sails of 
our sleigh, and away we go! I’d make 
you wooden dogs—wouldn’t you like 
that? ” 

“ Oh, I should just love it! ” I declared, 
with enthusiasm. “ Only I’m not quite 
sure . . . what are wooden dogs? ” 

“ The small one-seater sleighs which you 
push along with two long sticks, used 
on Balaton, Missie. Then we have fires 
on the ice, and you should just see the 
fishing! We cut big square openings in 
the ice, and lower the nets through them. 
Then when we pull them up, there are 
hundreds of fogas for you! ” 


80 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


I gazed ruefully at my fishing-line 
which I used to hold patiently for hours 
without catching as much as a little sullo. 
Somehow the fish always managed to get 
my worms without being caught on my 
hook. 

“ And on early spring nights, when the 
west wind sweeps over Balaton,” Somogyi 
bacsi went on, “ you should just hear the 
rianas, the ice cracking—you’d sure think 
it was thunder or cannon! ” 

I wished I could hear the rianas echoing 
through March nights, but after all I pre¬ 
ferred the gentle summer beauty of the 
lake. September had come, the forests 
on the north shore were turning to gor¬ 
geous yellows and reds, the grapes were 
ripening for the famous Balaton wines. 
The vineyards on the hills were filled with 
the noise and merry-making, the chatter 
and singing of the grape-pickers. 

The last week-end we spent at Balaton 
before the vacations were over was the 


THE HUNGARIAN SEA 


81 


crowning delight of that summer. Papa 
took us on a trip all round the lake. We 
travelled by rail, by carriage, by steam¬ 
boat, and by ferry; we saw huge, lazy 
black buffaloes wallow in the shallow 
water, and slender herons hunting for 
frogs. We saw the ruins of ancient castles 
upon the hills of Szigliget and Tatika, and 
sky-rockets flashing from the vineyards on 
Badacsony at night. We slept in what 
appeared to us grand hotels at Siofok and 
Fiired, listened to the playing of Gipsy 
bands and bought pretty souvenirs at the 
bazaars. Finally, greatest joy of all, we 
visited the ancient abbey and monastery 
at Tihany, built on a picturesque penin¬ 
sula jutting far out into the lake. 

When we landed at Tihany pier, we 
were immediately surrounded by half a 
dozen ragged children, clamoring to sell 
“ goats’ nails,” the curiously-shaped peb¬ 
bles that are found nowhere except on this 
particular beach. 


82 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


“ I don’t want to buy any, Papa,” I 
cried. “ I want to find some myself. 
Come and help me look for them! ” 

We soon had a handful of the odd white 
pebbles. “I’ll take one home as a keep¬ 
sake for Miss Minnie, and one for Cook, 
and one for Terus, and the rest I’ll keep 
for myself. There, you see I don’t want 
yours,” I told the children who had tried 
to sell us their stock. 

But Papa could not bear to see a dis¬ 
appointed face. “ Never mind, children,” 
he said. “ Show us the way up to the echo. 
Every child who can call loud enough to 
get an answer from the echo will get a 
krajczar —a new shiny one! ” 

The whole caravan raced up the wind¬ 
ing path to the top of the hill. Tihanv’s 
famous echo that can repeat a line of 
twelve syllables w 7 as kept busy for half an 
hour, for the children honestly earned 
their shiny coppers. When we had grown 
tired of it, Papa said: 



» 


THE HUNGARIAN SEA 


83 


“ I have another shiny hat os [nickel] 
here for the child that can tell us the story 
of Tihany, and why 4 goats’ nails ’ are 
found on this beach? ” 

A brave little lad of about twelve stood 
up, while the others clustered round us to 
hear the story they all knew so well: 

“ Once upon a time there lived a beau¬ 
tiful Princess in Tihany. She tended a 
flock of golden-fleeced goats on the hillside 
pastures. 

“ The Princess was kind and beautiful, 
her eyes were as blue as Balaton and her 
hair as golden as the fleece of her goats, 
but she could not speak. The Princess of 
Tihany was dumb. 

“ One day the Fairy of Balaton came 
out of the lake. 

“ ‘ The only son of the King of Balaton 
is very ill,’ she told the Princess. ‘ He will 
never get well unless he can have a drink 
of the milk of your golden-fleeced goats.’ 

“ So the Princess gave the fairy a cup 
of her goats’ milk for the King’s son. The 
minute he drank of the milk he got quite 
well and strong again. 


84 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


“ When his Father, the King of Bala¬ 
ton, saw this he was so glad that he wanted 
to reward the Princess for her kindness to 
his son. So he gave her a voice. Now the 
beautiful Princess could laugh and speak 
and sing, and her voice was as pretty as 
the ripple of silver streams. 

“ The King’s son saw the lovely Prin¬ 
cess and heard her sing. He fell so deeply 
in love with her that he sat day and night 
on top of a wave only to hear her voice. 

“ The Princess had been kind and good 
before, but now she grew so proud of her 
silver voice that she kept it from every 
one. She sang only for herself when no 
one heard her, and never opened her 
mouth if there was any one near. ‘ No¬ 
body is good enough to hear my lovely 
voice,’ she said. 

“ The poor King’s son longed and 
longed to hear her voice again, but she 
wouldn’t speak to him. He pined and 
pined for a word from her, but it was of 
no use. Finally he fell ill and died. 

“ The King’s wrath was terrible. He 
sent an awful storm over the lake. For 
three days and three nights all the hills 
spat fire, and the golden-fleeced goats 


THE HUNGARIAN SEA 


85 


were all drowned in the lake. To this day, 
the waves throw up their nails on Tihany 
shore. 

You have sinned by your tongue, and 
by your tongue shall you be punished/ 
the King told the Princess. Pie shut her 
up in one of the caves of Tihany hill. No 
one knows where she is. But if any one 
speaks to her, she must answer. She was 
proud and kept her voice to herself: now 
for her pride she is doomed to answer all 
men who call her, for ever and ever and 
ever.” 

The little story-teller got his nickel 
for the legend. The children ran down 
to meet the next steamer, while we went 
on to the Abbey. 

“ Well, do you know now why we can 
find ‘ goats’ nails ’ in Tihany? ” Elemer 
asked me. 

“ Why, you’ve just heard why—because 
the goats were drowned in the lake! ” 

“Oh, I see!” Elemer said, with his 
grave twinkle. “ Before I knew that I 

o 

used to think it was because there is a very 


86 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


strong current near Tihany which scoops 
out the pebbles in that curious way and 
flings them upon this beach. Of course I 
was mistaken—it’s the Princess’s gold- 
fleeced goats that are shedding their 
nails! ” 

I laughed, for I was too old to believe 
the legend, but all the same I thought it 
was very pretty. We went on to the 
Abbey, admired the fine library with its 
many thousands of old volumes, visited 
the monks’ quaint cells and the long 
rambling passages, and looked at the an¬ 
cient underground chapel where King 
Andras I lies buried. 

Many years later, when I revisited 
Tihany Abbey, I was shown another 
shrine of pilgrimage beside King Andras’s 
sepulchre. King Charles, the last of the 
Hapsburgs to rule Hungary and Austria, 
had to abdicate from the throne in 1918, 
at the close of the World War which had 
brought such disaster upon his countries. 



THE HUNGARIAN SEA 


87 


Two years later, he made an attempt to 
regain his power. He landed in an aero¬ 
plane on Hungarian ground, accompanied 
by Queen Zita. He had many partisans, 
but the foreign powers that had been 
Hungary’s foes during the war refused 
to agree to his return. The poor King 
and Queen were taken prisoners in their 
own country and interned at Tihany Ab¬ 
bey, in a couple of plain little rooms which 
are now being shown to visitors. Here 
they spent their last days in Hungary 
until a British cruiser came to carry them 
off to the Island of Madeira, where poor 
King Charles died soon after, an exile 
from the country which he loved so dearly 
and which, through no fault of his, had 
suffered so much during his reign. 


CHAPTER VI 


WORK AND PLAY 

The end of the holidays meant the be¬ 
ginning of serious work for me that fall. 
I had passed my examination for the 
fourth elementary class in the spring. I 
had completed my tenth year and was to 
attend a public school for the first time. 

How I enjoj^ed the bustle and business 
of those first days at school! Getting to 
know new girls, meeting some I had 
known before, comparing holiday experi¬ 
ences! Buying new books and pencils, 
binding each book and copy-book in crisp 
blue paper covers with white labels upon 
which I wrote, in my best calligraphy: 
“ Jacobi Erzsebet [Elizabeth], student of 
the 1st class of the Budapest State Girls’ 
Gymnasium.” 

Getting to know my teachers was an- 

88 


WORK AND PLAY 


89 


other great thrill. I had never been ac¬ 
customed to the idea of fearing any one. 
My father’s idea of study was to make a 
child understand things, not learn them 
for the sake of giving a correct answer. 
Lessons at school were different. I had 
to get into the way of preparing replies to 
questions, to learn little tricks of finding 
out when I was most likely to be ques¬ 
tioned, and the style in which one teacher 
or another liked to get answers; of getting 
the next hour’s lesson by heart during re¬ 
cess, in the intervals of swallowing a sand¬ 
wich and playing “ Last couple to the 
front ” in the school-yard. There were a 
number of teachers, however, who were 
above the petty habits of the others. I 
always remember their lectures with pleas¬ 
ure and gratitude, and I know I benefited 
greatly by them. 

At Middle School, as we call it, girls 
and boys were separated in those days 
as they are now. The school which I at- 


90 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 

tended was one of the first to adopt the 
curriculum of boys’ “ gymnasiums,” in¬ 
cluding Latin, which qualified for the uni¬ 
versity. The first group of girls who went 
up to the university in Hungary were in 
their eighth school year when I launched 
upon my first. We all felt very proud of 
our school and rather looked down upon 
those of our friends who attended schools 
without Latin, although we were not go¬ 
ing to study that lofty subject before the 
fifth class. 

School began at eight in the morning. 
There was ten minutes’ recess after every 
lesson, and twenty minutes’ recess at 
eleven. This was the time when, crowding 
around the table upon which Mrs. Szab6, 
the school porter’s wife, laid out tempting 
sugar or salt rolls and pastries to buy for 
“ ten o’clock lunch,” we discussed matters 
of the gravest importance. Lessons, 
teachers, schoolmates, the chances for that 
afternoon’s skating, and so forth. We 


WORK AND PLAY 


91 


studied all the usual subjects, but needle¬ 
work was also included, and drawing was 
a compulsory subject of some importance. 
I was particularly fond of the lessons we 
had in designing. We were taught to ap¬ 
ply the typical old ornaments used in the 
lovely embroideries and carvings of the 
Hungarian peasants, and used the same 
in our needlework. Thus we helped to 
preserve the designs handed down for cen¬ 
turies. 

No games were included in the school 
curriculum. Two hours a week for gym¬ 
nastic lessons were considered sufficient 
exercise. When it was fine, we had them 
out of doors, playing running games and 
round games. Of course my father saw 
to it that we got plenty of exercise out of 
school. Tennis, croquet, ice-skating, and 
swimming—head held high, shoulders well 
out of the water!—were the only forms of 
sport that were considered ladylike in 
Hungary when I was a little girl. But 




92 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


these had nothing to do with school. Of 
course, all that is changed now. 

At one o’clock we were ready to go 
home. A long line of mothers, sisters, 
governesses, and maids stood waiting by 
the school door to take the girls home. In 
those daj^s it would have been considered 
very unladylike for a young girl of good 
family—even for those well on in their 
teens—to walk through the streets of 
Budapest alone. This, too, has changed 
since. But I still remember with what a 
thrill I first went shopping alone when I 
returned from school in Switzerland, a 
“ finished ” young lady of seventeen. 

Our dreaded headmaster kept a watch¬ 
ful eye over us even after we had left the 
premises. He always placed himself in a 
corner where he could overlook his home¬ 
ward-hound flock. Woe to the girl who 
did not behave according to his strict ideas 
of correct deportment in the street. Most 
intently he watched, glaring through thick 



WORK AND PLAY 


93 


spectacles, those whose brothers came to 
fetch them. Since I was fortunate enough 
to possess three brothers to be fetched by, 
my company was greatly in demand. Ev¬ 
ery girl who went home the same way was 
glad to join us, for to be seen in the street 
accompanied by a real live boy was quite 
an adventure. 

Nevertheless, all the four hundred-odd 
girls over whom he ruled were fond of old 
“ Diry ”—that was our pet name for our 
Director (Headmaster), behind his back, 
of course. We all felt that he was just 
and wise, and he commanded our breath¬ 
less enthusiasm in Hungarian literature. 
The compositions we had to write for him 
once a month were preceded by long and 
excited conferences between my cousins 
Terus and Nora and myself. Terus had 
the greatest facility of style, Nora had 
all facts and figures at her finger-tips, and 
I was a recognized authority in spelling 
and grammar, so between us we mostly 


94 WHEN 1 WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


managed to turn out the three best com¬ 
positions of the class. “ Diry ” sometimes 
looked at us over the top of his thick 
glasses in a way that made us feel he had 
guessed the secret of our team-work. He 
couldn’t help seeing that our literary ef¬ 
forts were somewhat similar. Sometimes 
he would scribble a sarcastic remark on the 
margin in red ink. But at the end of the 
term the three of us got our “ Ones ” in 
composition and literature, all right. 

The entire class respected “ Diry,” and 
no liberties were ever taken with him—al¬ 
though this sometimes happened in the 
case of other teachers. There was onlv 
one exception, so far as I remember, and 
that was one of the blood-curdling inci¬ 
dents of my school days. 

There were two groups of forms in our 
classroom, with an aisle down the middle. 
“ Diry ” used to enter from the back, 
mount the dais on which stood his desk 
and chair, and start his lecture with much 


WORK AND PLAY 


95 


energy and temperament. He would stand 
up while he recited verses by Petofi and 
Arany and other classical authors, fling 
himself into his chair and start to his feet 
again. Since he was extremely short¬ 
sighted, it was his habit to walk up and 
down the aisle between the forms to see 
that none of us was reading or secretly 
corresponding under the table during his 
lecture. 

One morning, “ Diry ” came in as usual. 
Pie was telling us about the life of Petofi, 
Hungary’s greatest poet, who wrote the 
patriotic songs that roused the nation to 
resistance against the Austrian oppressor, 
and who met his own premature death on 
the battlefield of Segesvar. “ Diry ” stood 
by the table, orating, gesticulating, and 
he made that battlefield live for us. When 
he came to Petofi’s disappearance he 
stopped, and I remember the entire class 
drew a deep breath when the heroic story 
was at an end. 


96 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


Then “ Diry ” said, in a different voice, 
“ You will answer some questions now,” 
and he drew the class-book close to his 
short-sighted eyes. He sat down, and— 
crack! Something went off like a rifle¬ 
shot. “ Diry ” started to his feet as if he 
had been stung. He looked so funny that 
the whole class went off into a peal of 
laughter. After all, we were only children. 

What had happened? Some one had 
artfully concealed empty walnut shells un¬ 
der the chair legs. When “ Diry ” let his 
weight fall upon the chair, they cracked. 
That was all—but it had made “ Diry ” 
look ridiculous. He glared at us through 
his spectacles, and we were instantly si¬ 
lenced. Only a shy giggle or two came 
from the back rows. 

“ Diry ” did not say a word. He came 
down from the dais and began pacing the 
aisle as usual. Then it was that the most 
awful part happened. 

Some one—the same some one—had 




WORK AND PLAY 


97 


stretched a bit of thin string across the 
aisle, from one form to the other, an inch 
or so above the floor. No one could 
have noticed it in the shadows of the forms 
—least of all, our headmaster with his 
weak sight. He tripped over the string, 
and fell. The spectacles flew into a cor¬ 
ner, and “ Diry ” sprawled on the floor. 

Those who sat near rushed to the rescue. 
But “ Diry ” got to his feet alone, wiped 
his spectacles, glared, and said: 

“ Who did it? ” 

There was no reply. 

“ Whoever did it is a coward,” he said 
after a moment of tense silence. “ I know 
her name, and the entire class knows it. I 
do not wish you to tell me who it was. I 
am not going to lecture to this class any 
longer.” 

He left the room. When the door 
closed behind him we nearly lynched the 
culprit. We all did know who the girl 
was. Vica had always been a bad pupil. 


98 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


careless and inattentive. She was not ex¬ 
pected to pass the final examination of 
the year. Her long pigdail had to suffer 
for her crime, and her regulation black 
pinafore was in shreds and tatters by the 
time her mother came to fetch her. We 
told Vica’s mother what had happened, 
and we demanded that she should leave the 
school, since she had brought the calamity 
of “ Diry’s ” displeasure upon the class. 

Eventually, Vica was removed from the 
school, and we went in a body to ask 
“ Diry ” to resume our literature lessons. 
His anger had cooled down by this time. 
He continued to teach us during our en¬ 
tire school time. 

At home, our midday dinner always was 
a lively affair. My two big brothers were 
employed at various offices; Maria, be¬ 
sides her household duties, went into so¬ 
ciety a good deal; Victor and I had school 
yarns to tell. All the family assembled 
round the dinner-table with stories of the 


WORK AND PLAY 


99 


morning’s happenings. And whenever 
any event of general interest was the topic 
of the day, Papa would tell us about it. 
So perhaps I got a wider outlook and bet¬ 
ter knowledge of things at the dinner- 
table at home than I did at school. 

After dinner came “ prep.” for school, 
music lessons, piano practice, a walk, or 
an hour’s skating. At schoolroom tea- 
time our language teachers came in turns 
for an hour’s conversation. Hungarian is 
an entirely isolated language. It is un¬ 
like any other, and it is not spoken any¬ 
where beyond the country’s boundaries. 
Every really educated Hungarian speaks 
German, and very many learn English 
and French. We had either resident gov¬ 
ernesses or visiting teachers who taught us 
these languages. So the afternoon was a 
busy time, too. 

Yet there was time to read and play. I 
devoured books—stories from Hungarian 
history, the popular series of Mr. Brown 


100 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


Bear’s travels, verses galore; Jules 
Verne’s travel romances; Dickens’ Christ¬ 
mas Carol and some American books— 
“ The Story of a Bad Boy,” “ Huckle¬ 
berry Finn,” “ Tom Sawyer,” and “ Lit¬ 
tle Women.” All these were read and 
re-read. On week-days, I was left to my 
own devices during playtime. Most of the 
time I got on well enough with my dolls, 
my paint-box and the drawer filled with 
rags and odds and ends. But sometimes 
my imagination gave out, and I felt bored. 
However, there was always a safe remedy 
for that. 

Elemer usually sat reading for his law 
examination in Papa’s study, with a huge 
slice of bread-and-butter handy. He de¬ 
clared that bread-and-butter stimulated 
his brain. He worked verv hard, at the 
office all day and studying at night, but 
I never seemed to be in his way. I would 
climb up on the arm of his chair whenever 
I felt bored, and say: 


WORK AND PLAY 


101 


“ Elemer, please, what shall I do? ” 
Elemer always discovered something 
for me to do. Once he would suggest put¬ 
ting together a pictorial alphabet out of 
my big collection of post-cards. Another 
time he helped me build an imitation of 
the new bank building opposite out of my 
toy bricks, painting them to resemble the 
original. I nearly cried when we had to 
demolish it because Borcsa came to lay 
supper. Sometimes Victor, too, let me 
peep into the theatre he had constructed 
out of an old portfolio, making his paper 
dolls act and dance, and mimicking their 
conversations until I nearly died with 
laughter. If I had been sitting still too 
long, the boys would give me a fencing 
lesson, with rulers for foils and wire-net 
dish-covers for face-masks. 

One particularly cold and grey after¬ 
noon, Elemer took a long time to find an 
answer to my “ Please, what shall I do? ” 
“ Don’t you think we might do some- 


102 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


thing useful for once? ” he said at last. 
“ You know, I keep thinking of those poor 
children in the flood districts of which we 
spoke at dinner to-day. Papa wants to 
send them some money for warm clothes 
at Christmas. Don’t you want to try to 
make some little things which you might 
sell, and send the children the money you 
get? ” 

The idea fascinated me. 

“ I have three wooden candy-boxes 
which I can paint,” I cried, “ and Miss 
Myer showed me how to make those little 
scent-bags. I’m sure Cook would buy a 
couple! And Miss Myer wants a Hun¬ 
garian doll to send to her niece—I’ll dress 
one up for her. And when everything is 
ready I’ll arrange an exhibition!” 

“Good!” Elemer approved. “A ba¬ 
zaar. I’m sure you’ll make a lot of money. 
You might get Terus and Nora to help 
you.” 

“ Yes, and Lenke and Mariska and 



WORK AND PLAY 


103 


Margit, too! I’ll ask Maria to let them 
come here on Sunday. We’ll get together 
on Sundays and show each other what 
we’ve done during the week,”—and away 
I skipped, full of the big idea. 

We stitched and pasted, painted and 
embroidered busily for weeks. When our 
bazaar came off, it was a big success. 
Maria volunteered cakes and candy and 
plenty of chocolate topped with whipped 
cream to turn the occasion into a real 
party, and Papa rounded off our earnings 
so that we were able to send quite a neat 
sum to the victims of the inundation. Best 
of all, our little band of workers grew so 
closely united that we continued our Sun¬ 
day meetings, at home while it was cold, 
on long tramps and picnics when spring¬ 
time came. 

It was at Elemer’s suggestion again 
that we constituted ourselves a club, and 
it was he who gave us our name—the So¬ 
ciety of Wiseacres—that was what he said 


104 WHEN 1 WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


we all were. Our badge was a white but¬ 
ton on a red ribbon, with S. W. painted 
on it in green—red, white, and green being 
the national colors of Hungary. We all, 
including our governesses, who were hon¬ 
orary members, proudly wore our badges 
at every outing. We went on voyages of 
discovery among the Buda hills, we hunted 
for snowdrops and violets on the slopes of 
Janoshegy, explored the ruins of Visegrad 
castle where King Matthias the Just held 
his brilliant court four hundred years ago. 
We walked and talked, w r e worked and 
sketched, we often quarrelled, but we al¬ 
ways made it up in the end, and to this day 
all the Wiseacres that are left are firm 
friends, united by the dear memory of 
childish days. 



Uncle Szatay with the Four-in-Hand, 






Uncle Beke Driving the Ox-Cart. 

Characteristic well-pole in background. 



Beautiful Needlework made by Village Girls. 






CHAPTER VII 


TRANSYLVANIA 

One school term went by after the other 
in pretty much the same way. Early in 
June, when we were head over ears in our 
hooks, studying for our annual class ex¬ 
aminations, I always began to look for¬ 
ward to Eors as to a vision of delight. 
And when at last examinations and school 
thanksgiving service were over, and I re¬ 
turned home, waving my report more or 
less triumphantly, it was time to get the 
trunks down from the attic and start pack¬ 
ing them to go to Eors. 

My fourth year at school happened to 
be rather successful. We took a number 
of interesting subjects, I had worked with 
a will, and at the end of the school year my 
report displayed an unusually goodly 

105 


106 WHEN 1 WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 

number of “ Ones,” only a few “ Twos,” 
and no “ Threes ” at all—not to mention 
“ Fours,” the worst note, which meant be¬ 
ing “ flunked.” 

44 Well, this is very good indeed,” Papa 
said when I showed him the report. 44 1 
am very glad, for I have been planning 
a little surprise for you, and I am glad 
you deserve it.” 

44 Oh, Papa, what is it? Are we going 
to Balaton again? How splendid!” 

44 Not to Balaton—something better 
than that. Guess what it is.” 

44 Better than Balaton? Oh . . . 

are we really . . . are we going to 

Transylvania? ” 

Papa’s blue eyes smiled with satisfac¬ 
tion, and the little wrinkles around them 
smiled too. 

44 1 promised you we should, some day,” 
he said. 

Transylvania, the mountain country be¬ 
yond the watershed of Iviralyhago, had 



TRANSYLVANIA 107 

\ 

always been the land of my dreams. Dur¬ 
ing the tempestuous centuries of our wars 
against Turkey, Transylvania had been 
an independent principality, a refuge of 
Hungarian liberty and culture while the 
rest of the country was held in bondage. 
The inhabitants—Magyars, Rumanians, 
Saxons—lived in peace and prosperity un¬ 
der the rule of their “ gracious princes.” 
Although Transylvania had been reunited 
to Hungary more than two hundred years 
before, yet in some ways it remained a 
small country by itself. It always kept 
up its old customs and traditions. One 
can always tell a Transylvanian by his 
bearing, by his accent, by his pride in be¬ 
ing a native of his little forest land. I was 
very much interested in all that I had 
heard of the past and present of the land 
beyond the watershed. Besides, it was 
the country where Papa was born. 1ST o 
wonder I longed to see it. 

On a hot morning in June Papa and I 


108 WHEN 1 WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


started on our journey. The train rushed 
eastward, across the “Alfold,” the great 
Hungarian plain. Land as flat as a table, 
ripening corn-fields unbroken save by an 
occasional clump of acacia-trees, a group 
of whitewashed, thatched cottages, or the 
characteristic T-shaped pole-well of the 
Hungarian pnszta. 

“ How flat it all is, Papa! The country 
around Eors is prettier—more green, and 
not so dull.’’ 

“ It certainly is flat—but the best grain 
in Hungary grows here, between the rivers 
Duna and Tisza. As for greenness, wait 
till we get beyond the watershed. Look, 
here is the Tisza already! ” 

I looked curiously at the shallow, lazy, 
curving stream. It seemed hard to im¬ 
agine that the same innocent-looking river 
had flooded its flat banks time and again, 
causing terrible devastation and distress 
only that spring. When the mountain 
streams brought the melting snows down 



TRANSYLVANIA 


109 


to the plain, tame Tisza was turned into a 
raging torrent. 

The train sped on and on, past cities 
that were more like vast villages, through 
thousands and thousands of acres of grain 
land. But it didn’t seem to last long. I 
closed my eyes to be able to think very 
hard about Transylvania. When I opened 
them again, Papa was getting down our 
bags from the rack. 

“ What is it, Papa? This can’t be De- 
breczen—we’ve only just left Szolnok. I 
haven’t been asleep—only closed my eyes 
for a few minutes.” 

“ Only for about two hundred minutes, 
dear. Peep out of the window—this is 
Debreczen.” 

Debreczen, the big peasant city, seemed 
like another interminable village to me. 
Long, straight streets of ground-floor cot¬ 
tages with uniform porches, tiny gar¬ 
den plots and large clean-swept yards 
stretched before us until we came to the 



110 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


center of “ Calvinist Rome,” as De- 
breczen is called, for nearly all her inhab¬ 
itants are Protestants, whereas the in¬ 
habitants of the greater part of Plungary 
are Catholic. Presently Papa pointed out 
to me the buildings of which I had learned 
in history lesson. Here were the Nagy - 
templom (Big Church) where, in 1849, 
Governor Kossuth had declared Hun¬ 
gary’s independence from the Hapsburgs, 
and Debreczen College, the far-famed 
abode of Protestant learning and the hall 
where the Hungarian Parliament assem¬ 
bled when the allied Austro-Russian 
forces had driven it from the capital in 
1849. 

After a good night’s rest in the old, 
rambling “ Golden Steer ” Inn, Papa and 
I drove out to Hortobagv. It is a wide- 
spreading, vast expanse of unbroken flat 
pasture-land where Debreczen’s famous 
cattle and horses graze from year’s end to 
year’s end. 



Parliament House in Budapest. 



Statue of Prince Eugene of Savoya, 

Liberator of Hungary from the Turks. 




















Horseherds and Cowherds on Hortobagy Puszta. 


Uncle Bagi in his Sheepskin Coat. 


J&- 


- - n Tm***-* 




... ; 


2 - v '-**£**•, ' £*•; - ** .. uTMfl 

« V* • 2-Z+ -O - » “‘.'-rJ 




TRANSYLVANIA 


111 


“ The life which the gulyas [cattleman] 
and the csikos [horseherd] lead upon 
Hortobagy puszta,” Papa explained, “ is 
scarcely changed from the way of living 
of our nomadic ancestors who came from 
Asia a thousand years ago. The Magyars 
were a people of cattle-tenders who came 
to this country on the search for fresh 
pastures. When they found this blessed 
land of good grass and good water, they 
settled down and gradually became grain- 
growers. But the Hortobagy csikos and 
gulyas have no house to live in, just as 
their horses and cattle are not accustomed 
to stables. Their little reed huts and their 
suba [cloaks] are all the protection they 
need. The one real brick house on Horto¬ 
bagy that you will see, far and wide, is the 
famous Hortobagy csarda [inn], of which 
you have heard stories and songs.” 

Didn’t I remember them! I half ex¬ 
pected to see a “Szegeny legeny 33 [poor 
fellow], the people’s name for the high- 


112 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


waymen and horse-thieves that roamed 
about that countryside a century ago, 
whirl past on horseback in a cloud of dust, 
with a couple of pandurs (field police) 
after him. 

“ Fast ride winds and fast ride storms, fast 
rides disaster, 

But the betyar on the Alfold rides still 
faster! ” 

I had read all about them in Petofi, and 
we loved to play at “ betyars and pan¬ 
durs 33 (robbers and gendarmes) in the 
Eors garden. 

However, there was not a trace of ro¬ 
mantic highwaymen—they had disap¬ 
peared from Hortobagy many years ago. 
We had a capital dinner of birkapaprikas 
[paprika-flavored mutton stew] and 
turoscsusza [dough with curds] at the 
inn. Then we went out to have a look 
around. 

The heat was appalling. The sun’s rays 


TRANSYLVANIA 


113 


were like glowing arrows, the sky was 
blindingly radiant. 

“ Can’t we go somewhere in the shade, 
Papa? ” I wanted to know. Papa 
laughed. 

“ There is no shady place on Horto- 
bagy, my dear. Look, there is no tree as 
far as the eye can see.” 

At the inn, during dinner, we had made 
friends with an old cowherd who had now 
come out with us to do the honors of the 
puszta. 

“ Oh, yes, there is, Missie,” he said, with 
such utter gravity that I ought to have 
suspected he was joking. 44 Look to the 
right. There is a beautiful forest—cool 
shade for you there! ” 

I looked, and exclaimed with delight. 
There, in the far distance, I beheld trees, 
green, shady trees, that made you feel 
cool even to look at them. And something 
blue—yes, water—a lake! How refresh¬ 
ing that lake looked! 




114 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


“ Oh, Papa, let’s go over there, and have 
a dip in the lake—that’ll be lovely! ” 

“ Very well,” Papa said. “ Only I’m 
afraid it is rather far.” 

“ Never mind—it won’t take us long to 
get there. I’m off! ” 

I remembered later that Papa and our 
companion exchanged a wink, but at the 
time I didn’t notice it. We started at a 
sharp pace. In ten minutes I felt hotter 
than ever. The sun was scorching, and 
we didn’t seem to be a bit nearer the trees 
and the lake than before. Papa took off 
his coat and I turned up the sleeves of my 
frock, but the gulyds bacsi didn’t seem to 
feel a bit warm. 

“ Aren’t you warm in that sheepskin 
cloak, Bacsi? ” I asked him. 

“ Oh, no, Missie. This is a good suba 
—it keeps the cold out in winter, and the 
sun off in summer,” he smiled. 

We went on, but the trees seemed to be 
going on, too. Besides, the longer I 




TRANSYLVANIA 


115 


looked at them the funnier they seemed. 
They looked upside down, somehow. I 
supposed it was their reflection in the lake. 

“ I—I'm afraid that lake is rather far. 
Papa,” I said in a small voice. 

“ I’m afraid it is, dear,” he smiled, 
stopping to wipe his brow. “ You see we 
don’t get any nearer—we shouldn’t if we 
went on till sundown. Don’t you know 
what it is? ” 

Then suddenly I remembered. Why, it 
was something I had read about but never 
seen! 

“ Fata Morgana! ” I cried. “ It’s a 
mirage—I might have known! ” 

“ Well, at least you have really seen 
one. Now we will go back to the inn and 
drive to the station. We mustn’t miss the 
Kolozsvar train.” 

Late that night we arrived at Kolozs¬ 
var, the ancient capital of the principality 
of Transylvania. Here I saw real trees, 
hills, and water at last, no mere delusions. 


116 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


Ivolozsvar is full of old memories. There 
are many ancient mansions of noble fam¬ 
ilies; here, too, stands the house where 
King Matthew the Just was born and 
bred. His fine equestrian statue stands 
in front of the Cathedral. 

Nowadays Ivolozsvar is a sacred and 
tragic landmark for us Hungarians. All 
Transylvania and a very large part of the 
country besides was taken from Hungary 
after the World War and joined to Ru¬ 
mania by the Trianon treaty. Ivolozsvar 
is called Cluj now and belongs to the 
Kingdom of Rumania. But no Hun¬ 
garian can grow resigned to the idea that 
Transylvania should forever be severed 
from Hungary. In the days when I was 
there, however, long before the World 
War, such a thing had not seemed pos¬ 
sible. 

We visited some other cities and places 
of interest, too. Endless forests, romantic 
mountains, deep, dark-green lakes passed 


TRANSYLVANIA 


117 


before my wondering eyes; ruined castles, 
cities of old, old houses and narrow streets, 
churches fortified against the Turk. 

After a week of rambling we arrived at 
Szaszsebes, a small township where some 
of my father’s relatives owned an im¬ 
portant sawmill. Transylvania is very 
rich in timber and ore, and its chief in¬ 
dustries are connected with these products. 

Everything was different from what I 
had been accustomed to. Instead of the 
whitewashed cottages of the plains, the 
small houses were painted sky-blue, and 
the plain lattice doors to the fences were 
replaced by beautifully carved wooden 
gates and pillars. Instead of the richly 
gathered white linen trousers and shirt¬ 
sleeves and the stiff top-boots the men 
wore at Eors, the peasants in this part of 
the country were dressed in tight white 
woolen trousers, leather slippers with 
thongs wound around the legs, and long 
shirts with wide, intricately-worked leather 


118 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


belts over them. The women clid not wear 
many starched petticoats like the ones I 
had seen before, but a couple of bright 
aprons over their long skirts, one in front 
and one behind. The full sleeves of their 
blouses were beautifulty embroidered, and 
they put small straw hats on the tops of 
their kerchief-bound heads. 

The whole life of the community seemed 
different. In the country where I had 
been before, grain seemed the most im¬ 
portant thing: here, most people depended 
on timber for their living. The most im¬ 
portant time of the year was “ big water ” 
time, early in summer and after the fall 
rains, when the little brook Sebes grew 
into a powerful stream. This was the 
time to float the timber that had been 
felled during the year, down from the 
wooded mountain heights. It was brought 
on shore, worked in the sawmill, and 
transported by rail to various parts of the 
country. 


TRANSYLVANIA 


119 


When we arrived at Szaszsebes, Aunt 
Anna kissed me, then she held me at arm’s 
length. 

“ She’s a nice little thing, but one can 
see she hasn’t been brought up in Erdely 
[Transylvania], poor child! Well, what 
can you expect from Alfold food? We’ll 
make her cheeks round and rosy soon 
enough—two cups of buffalo-milk coffee 
every morning, and a good plateful of 
puliszka [corn-meal pastry] every night 
will do her a world of good! ” 

Neither the rich, creamy buffalo milk, 
nor the yellow, thick puliszka was exactly 
to my taste, but I swallowed them heroic¬ 
ally to please Aunt Anna. Very soon 
they did help me to grow round and rosy. 
But the clear, bracing mountain air did 
the best part of the job. 

There was a houseful of new cousins 
whom I hadn’t met before, boys and girls 
of all ages. They made me feel at home 
right away. They took me around the 


120 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


house and garden, around the mill-yard 
and the quaint little old city. 

“ Can you ride, Boske? ” Akos, the 
eldest boy, asked me one morning. 

“ Yes, Lajos bacsi gave me riding-les¬ 
sons on Rablo last summer.” 

“ Good! Father is going up to Oasa 
dike to-morrow. He is taking Joska and 
me along, and he said you may come, too, 
if you don’t mind roughing it a bit. We 
are taking the horses. Most of the way 
there is not much road to speak of.” 

Of course I didn’t mind roughing it! 
We started at dawn with the carriage. 
Up the narrow river valley the steep road 
curved. I had never seen such lovely 
scenery before. The sheer hillsides were 
covered by a dense forest of fir, pine, and 
birch which alternated with emerald-green 
pastures. The tiny huts of Rumanian 
shepherds were perched high on cliffs that 
seemed hardly accessible. Brooks rushed, 
babbling and foaming, from every side 


i 


TRANSYLVANIA 


121 


valley into the main stream. White tim¬ 
ber was drifting down-stream, and at 
every turning stood half a dozen workmen 
in white shirts and long trousers, often up 
to the waist in water, helping on the tim¬ 
ber with long boat-hooks to avoid crowd¬ 
ing. 

“ This is as far as we can drive,” Uncle 
Joska said, after I had been thinking 
privately that there hadn’t been much of 
a road for the past hour or so. “ See, 
here are the horses and Juon waiting for 
us already.” 

The little shaggy ponies weren’t a patch 
on Rablo as far as looks went, but when I 
was safely settled in the funny high 
wooden saddle, I found I hadn’t much to 
do—my horse knew best. We started in 
single file. The pack-horse which carried 
our rugs and provisions came last, with 
Juon, the Rumanian servant, following on 
foot. The horses picked their way care¬ 
fully and deftly up the slippery, rocky 



122 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


path, over boulders, along narrow ledges, 
across damp marshy ground. I wouldn’t 
have trusted my own feet along that path, 
but I felt perfectly safe perched on my 
saddle, carried by my sure-footed pony. 

Uncle Joska had to look after the 
waterway all along the brook, to see how 
the timber was drifting down, and whether 
locks and dikes, dams and gullies were all 
in good working order. We had a gay 
picnic lunch under a fir-tree by the brook. 
Then we went on again, uphill and down, 
wading through creeks, breaking through 
brushwork. The ponies didn’t seem to 
mind it any more than we did. 

At nightfall we came to Oasa dike. 
How lovely the smooth pond looked, 
closed in by gigantic mountains of sheer 
rock, with the calm starry sky reflected in 
it! The dike-keeper lived in a small hut 
near by. It was his duty to open the dike 
once a day, to let the water flow freely 
into the brook and carry the timber down. 


TRANSYLVANIA 


123 


An hour later, he closed it again, so that 
sufficient water might collect again for 
next day’s drifting. 

The keeper and Juon built a big fire to 
cook our supper, while the boys and I 
picked large bunches of forget-me-nots 
and Akos climbed the rocks for wild crim¬ 
son rhododendrons to take home to his 
mother. I liked the smoked sheep’s cheese 
which the dikeman served for our dessert 
far better than the puliszka he regaled us 
with. Then he made up the fire, got out 
his reed pipe, and began playing beauti¬ 
ful, sad tunes for us—tunes that he used 
to play for himself and the stars on the 
long lonely nights by the mountain dike. 

“ Time for bed, children,” Uncle Joska 
said presently. “ Remember we start on 
our way back at five in the morning to¬ 
morrow.” 

“ Where will you sleep, Domnule [Ru¬ 
manian for “ sir ”] ? ” the keeper inquired. 
“ In the hut, or outdoors? ” 


124< WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


“ Well, what do you advise? ” 

The keeper scratched his head before he 
answered. 

“ Well,—indoors it’s warmer, and it’s 
dry. But then the rats are rather a 
nuisance. They seem to have got wind of 
my cheese, and they dragged my knapsack 
out from under my head yesterday. But 
they don’t hurt—much. And we can 
fasten the door. Perhaps we had better. 
Because last week I had a visit from 
Terente the highwayman and his gang. 
They came over from Rumania across the 
Pass. Only, luckily he didn’t know I had 
come up already. It was just before the 
drifting began. I suppose Master Ter¬ 
ente thought the hut was still empty, so 
he did not trouble to knock and went on, 
back over the frontier. He might come 
back, so perhaps we had just as well keep 
inside the hut.” 

“ Oh, we have guns,” Uncle Joska said. 
I saw Akos’ and young Joska’s eyes glit- 


TRANSYLVANIA 


125 


ter with the anticipation of a fight with the 
notorious Rumanian robber. 

“ Just as you please, sir. I suppose if 
we build a fire the wolves won’t come near 
—because, you know, Domnule, they 
killed a cow, not five minutes from here, 
only three days ago. The Cindrel shep¬ 
herds saw a bear this morning, but then 
he won’t necessarily come here to-night. 
Just as you please, sir.” 

“ Well, Boske, you may choose,” Uncle 
said. “ Where do you prefer to sleep— 
indoors with rats, or outdoors with wolves, 
robbers, and bears?” 

The robbers and the wild beasts were 
only a remote possibility, but the rats 
seemed an unpleasant certainty, so I voted 
for camping outdoors. The keeper pre¬ 
ferred rats. He retired into the hut, while 
Juon prepared rugs and shawls for our 
resting-place. 

It felt frightfully adventurous to lie 
snugly by the fire, between the two boys 



126 WHEN 1 WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


who kept their guns well within reach. 
Uncle and Juon took turns at sitting up 
and mending the fire. I watched for bears 
and highwaymen among the shadows of 
the trees until I fell asleep. In my 
dreams I saw robbers’ caves, rats drown¬ 
ing in the dike, and a jolly bear sitting up 
on his hind legs and feasting off a round 
sheep’s cheese as large as the moon. 

The sun was just climbing C in dr el peak 
when I woke in the morning. Juon was 
busy toasting bacon for breakfast by the 
fire, and Akos was drying our things that 
were drenched with dew. 

“ Oh, didn’t Terente come? ” I asked 
with some disappointment, for in the 
morning light all the terrifying adven¬ 
tures of which we had spoken at night 
seemed desirably romantic—all but the 
rats. 

“ No, fortunately he didn’t,” Uncle 
laughed. “ Perhaps he met the wolves 
and the bear and they kept him busy. 


TRANSYLVANIA 


127 


Never mind—I’m sure none of your 
friends in Budapest has ever been on such 
a venturesome excursion. Won’t they all 
envy you when you tell them about it! ” 


CHAPTER VIII 


SYLVESTER NIGHT 

The winter that followed my Transyl¬ 
vanian trip was a very lively one in our 
home. There was an atmosphere of sus¬ 
tained excitement in the house. Two 
great events loomed on the horizon. The 
first play to which Victor had composed 
the music was to be performed at a big 
theatre. He w T as only twenty-one, still a 
student at the Academy of Music. And 
Maria was to be married in spring. She 
was going to leave Budapest for good, 
since her fiance lived in a country town. 
Of course we would miss her very much, 
but the prospect of a new brother-in-law, 
of a new place to visit, of helping Maria 
furnish her new home, made up for any 
feeling of melancholy. 

128 


SYLVESTER NIGHT 


129 


Victor had moved his writing-table to 
the piano and worked hard all day and 
most of the night. He was on the point 
of realizing his grandest dreams. He 
could speak of nothing but music, the 
theatre, rehearsals, actors, singers and 
managers all day. I was a good listener, 
for he had made me just as keenly inter¬ 
ested in it all as he was himself. 

“ Listen to this, Boske,” he would say 
twenty times of an afternoon. “ I’ve 
changed the last three bars of the tinker’s 
song. Like this . . and he strummed 

it on the piano indefatigably. 

“ I’ve found a beautiful design for my 
guest-room wardrobe in this catalogue,” 
Maria would say. “ Come and trace it for 
me, Boske, will you? The joiner is com¬ 
ing this afternoon for the drawings.” 

If there was nothing better to do, I used 
to slip into the back room where Ilka 
kisasszony [Miss Ilka] the seamstress sat 
seaming and marking sheets and towels. 


130 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


She embroidered big red and white mono¬ 
grams with intricate flourishes on Maria’s 
dozens and dozens of towels, napkins, and 
table-cloths. 

“ You might sort the dish-cloths for me. 
Miss Boske, dear,” she would say. “ To- 
ni-ight the pillow ca-a-ases will all be 
done, done, done,” she hummed in tune to 
the music of Victor’s piano that came from 
the next room. 

“ Oh, you must get the schoolroom tea 
for yourself to-day, Miss Boske,” Cook 
declared. “ Mr. Fiance is coming to sup¬ 
per, and the chickens still running about 
alive! Take those walnuts, there’s a dear; 
and ask Ma’amselle, or whatever her name 
is, to help you pick them during your 
French lesson. I want them in the cream 
tart for supper.” 

I suppose my school studies suffered 
that year under the stress of so much ex¬ 
citement. But I was a very popular per¬ 
son in class because I had so many in- 


SYLVESTER NIGHT 


131 


teresting things to tell the girls during 
recess. 

My Christmas notes of merit, however, 
must have been fairly satisfactory. In 
any case they were not bad enough to spoil 
the thrill of the first night of Victor’s play, 
“ The Haughty Princess,” which brought 
the young composer the first of his big 
successes. I basked in his glory. Nor did 
the Christmas presents under the candle¬ 
lit tree turn out worse than usual. The 
year that was drawing towards its close 
had been a happy and eventful one. It 
deserved a festive and gay farewell. 

The day before New Year was one of 
feverish preparations. There was to be a 
big supper party for young people, to 
celebrate Maria’s engagement. I was 
allowed to “stay up.” I was nearly 
fifteen, and when Maria was married I 
was to be “ the young lady of the house.” 

Cook was fairly distracted. She 
wouldn’t tolerate the ordering of any dish 


132 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


from a caterer’s or confectioner’s. “ What 
would Mr. Fiance think of us! ” she said. 
“ He would think we are bad house¬ 
keepers, Miss Maria! ” 

We borrowed all the housemaids in the 
family to help lay the table and serve 
supper. Such a coming and going there 
was, such cleaning of silver and arranging 
of flowers, such laying out of intricate cold 
dishes and baskets of fruit, such whisking 
of eggs and stirring of batter! Of course 
I literally had a finger in every pie. 

“ I think this chocolate batter wants a 
little more sugar, Cook,” said I, tasting 
the mixture Borcsa was stirring. 

“ Keep away from that dish, Miss 
Boske! ” Cook said for the tenth time. 
“ If you keep tasting it, there’ll be none 
left for supper. I’ll put it right on top 
of that shelf where you can’t reach it, until 
the oven is ready for baking.” 

That was a very bad move on Cook’s 
part. It offended my dignity. 


SYLVESTER NIGHT 


133 


“ Oh, can’t I just? I’m as tall as you 
any day, Cook. Besides, I only tasted a 
wee mouthful from the edge, and Maria 
told me to see whether it’s sweet enough.” 
And I reached up for the dish, just to 
show Cook what’s what. 

Crash! Down came the chocolate bat¬ 
ter, and with it the salad that also stood 
on the shelf—all over my white muslin 
apron with pink bows, my pretty Christ¬ 
mas present! The flowers cut out of 
carrots and paprika to adorn the salad, 
the work of my own hands, floated ele¬ 
gantly on my blue sailor dress. Cook sat 
down. She was speechless. We two must 
have made a picture of distress. Maria 
opened the door of the storeroom at that 
very moment and when she beheld the 
spectacle she began to laugh and laughed 
till she nearly cried. 

“ Easy for you to laugh, Miss Maria,” 
Cook grumbled when she had at last found 
her voice. “ It’s me got to stir that tart 



134 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


again, and get the salad. I told that 
child . . .” 

“ That child ” was another offence, but 
I kept my peace this time. I felt too 
guilty to make myself conspicuous. 

“ Never mind, Cook,” Maria comforted 
her. “ Don’t let us allow anything to spoil 
this day for us. I’m sure six tarts and 
the cakes and the ices will be enough. 
We don’t want another chocolate-cream 
one. And we have pickled cabbage and 
cucumbers and paprika and beets and 
asparagus—I really don’t think we need 
any more salad. Come and dress, Boske! ” 

We left Cook still muttering, “ They’ll 
say we are bad housekeepers.” I escaped 
a scolding because it was Sylvester, New 
Year’s Eve, but I felt that this must be 
my last childish scrape. Why, soon I w T as 
to keep house for Papa and the boys! 
Plow could I ever get Cook to respect me? 

But soon everything was forgotten in 
the excitement of putting on a new white 


SYLVESTER NIGHT 


135 


muslin frock and white shoes and stock¬ 
ings. A hair-dresser came to wave and 
curl Maria’s hair and after he had taken 
about half an hour to stick a dozen pins 
and combs into it, he set to work to put 
up my hair, too. Until that day it had 
been hanging down my back in unruly 
curls, but this was a symbol of my new 
dignity as a big girl, and very proud I 
felt of it. We were just ready when the 
guests began to arrive. 

After the first courses were finished and 
the first toasts had been drunk, suddenly 
there came strains of music from the hall. 
Lajos, Maria’s fiance, had sent for a 
Tzigane band as a surprise for us. Then 
did everybody’s spirits go up! Gipsy 
music has a wonderful effect on one’s 
spirits. No real party, no fun is complete 
without it in Hungary. 

The Gipsies played softly outside while 
we finished supper. Presently, when the 
tables were cleared, they drifted into the 


136 WHEN 1 WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


room. Lajos motioned the primas (first 
fiddle) to stand behind Maria’s chair and 
play softly into her ear: 

“ Only one girl in the world for me, 

Sweetest flower in the world is she, 

Indeed I am loved by God in Heaven, 

Since the dearest girl to me He’s given.” 

“ Come here, more !” Barna called to 
the swarthy Gipsies. “ Here’s another 
young lady for whom you must play.” 
The primas came up behind me and asked, 
“ What may your favorite song be, 
Missie? ” 

But I wouldn’t tell him. I had seen the 
grown-up girls letting the Gipsies play 
for them. I tossed my head just as they 
did, and said: “ You must guess! ” The 
Gipsies started playing one song after the 
other. We knew them all. Some girls 
and young men knew the words to a hun¬ 
dred folk-songs at least, and could sing 
them by the hour, all through the night. 


SYLVESTER NIGHT 


137 


But I shook my head after each. The 
Gipsies played and played until at last 
they hit upon the right one: 

“ Gentle stocks may blossom, yet they fade to¬ 
morrow : 

There’s no consolation for my grief and 
sorrow.” 

This is a very old song, over which 
Hungarians have laughed and cried for 
two hundred years. “ Now we’ll stick to 
this! ” we cried. The Gipsies went on 
playing it, then they started another, fast 
and faster. Then we began to dance 
cs'ardds . None of us tired of the now slow 
and dignified, then twinkling and whirling 
measures. 

“ It’s almost midnight,” Maria cried, 
“ and we haven’t told fortunes yet! Quick, 
Borcsa, get a spirit-lamp and those bits of 
lead that we’ve saved! ” 

They were brought, and every girl in 
turn warmed a bit of lead over the spirit- 


138 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


lamp in a spoon. When it began to melt 
it was cast quickly into a glass of cold 
water. It sizzled and spluttered and set¬ 
tled immediately into odd, fanciful shapes. 
We tried to recognize what objects they 
resembled and to give them some sort of 
meaning. 

Maria’s bit of lead was cast into a shape 
that we made out was like a crown, but if 
you looked at it from another angle it was 
more like a miniature easy-chair. We 
declared it stood for the myrtle crown 
that she was to wear soon, and for the fur¬ 
niture in her new home. She could think 
of nothing else! Cousin Terus got a 
funny sort of scroll. Elemer said it was 
the sign for a paragraph, and it meant 
that in the New Year she would get her 
way and would be allowed to study law, 
as she longed to do. What I got looked 
most decidedly like a spoon, and a bit of 
lead sticking up out of it was sharp and 
pointed like a needle. 


SYLVESTER NIGHT 


139 


“ That means that you are going to 
learn to cook and to sew this year, as a 
good housekeeper should,” they all de¬ 
clared. 

We were still trying to construe some 
meaning from the funny shapes, amid a 
great deal of laughter and fun, when sud¬ 
denly all the lights went out. Papa had 
turned them off. It was midnight. 

“A Happy New Year!” everybody 
shouted. The Gipsies fiddled away, there 
came noise and laughter and congratula¬ 
tions—and then, a squeal. The desperate 
plaintive squeal of a little pig. 

The room was flooded with light again. 
And then began a chase after the unfor¬ 
tunate little pink pig that had been let 
loose in the room “ for luck.” Terus was 
the lucky one who caught him. We all 
touched and pinched the poor little ani¬ 
mal’s ear for luck during the New Year. 
No one really believed the superstition, 
but then we did it just for the fun of the 


140 WHEN 1 WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


thing. Then Borcsa carried poor Porky 
out for a good night’s rest in the kitchen 
before he would be stuck for to-morrow’s 
New Year’s dinner. 

There was a knock at the door. “ Here 
is another visitor to make our luck quite 
safe,” said Papa. And in walked a sooty 
gentleman, grinning all over his face 
which had been specially washed for the 
occasion. 

r 

‘‘A chimney-sweep! Eljenl [Hurrah ] ’’ 
we cheered. Nobody hesitated to shake 
hands with him, for to shake hands with 
a sweep on Sylvester Night is really the 
luckiest thing you can do. So no one 
minded getting his hands blackened. 
The sweep, for one, was certainly lucky, 
for he departed with a pocketful of tips, 
wishing us all a very prosperous New 
Year. 

Borcsa appeared, carrying the punch¬ 
bowl. Healths had to be drunk in punch 
again. Presently the boys discovered that 


SYLVESTER NIGHT 


141 


so much fun had made them hungry again, 
and they might do with something to eat. 
Maria had provided for the emergency. 
Hot cabbage soup with sausages is the 
best “ pick-me-up ” after such a night as 
this. We couldn’t let our guests go out 
into the cold January dawn without first 
giving them some. 

When at last they had all gone, Papa 
came into the room where Maria and I 
were hurriedly trying to bring some 
semblance of order out of chaos. The 
place looked as if an army of soldiers had 
been camping in it. 

“ Well, my little girls,” Papa said, 
putting an arm round each of us. “ I’ll 
say good-night to you now, and once more 
wish you a very, very happy New Year. 
You are entering upon a new life, Maria, 
dear: may you be as happy in it as you 
have been at home. And you, little one— 
you are starting a new life, too. You will 
be our big girl now, with no Maria to take 



142 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HUNGARY 


care of you. Instead, you will have to 
take care of us men. You know, we 
always want a woman to look after our 
needs. So now you, little woman, will 
have to take care of us.” 

The twinkle was there in Papa’s eyes, 
but he looked serious, too. Somehow I 
felt that this was a solemn occasion. I 
knew no little girl in the world had ever 
been taken better care of than I, but I 
vowed that I, too, would do my best to 
look after all those who belonged to me. 

That was how a little girl in Hungary 
was turned into a little woman overnight. 


THE END 


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